Seeing Red (Ensign)

Still looking over blogs. One that did catch my eye was the collection of bloggers who write under the name of Red Ensign Brigade, who presumably see in our late and somewhat unlamented unofficially official flag as symbol of everything that used to be fair and bright in our great land. To quote the blogger at Ravishing Light again:

Above all, it's a flag I could stand behind and be proud of. The Canada of the Red Ensign hadn't yet withdrawn from the great traditions and achievements of western civilization to wallow in whiny and toothless self-righteousness. Canada before Mike Pearson was a place I think I could have been content with.

Fair enough. If using an 18th century British merchant navy device gets your mojo up, fine, though some might question Canada's halcyon nature prior to 1965: nostalgia, as someone far more clever than me once remarked, is longing for a past that never existed. But I think some of these bloggers forget, if even they were alive, that the Red Ensign was used as a rallying point in the late Sixties and early Seventies against everything from the supposed French plot to take over the country by making Corn Flakes boxes bilingual to changes in the immigration policy and against Trudeau himself. And as much as the flag debate was divisive, it's pretty well forgotten how divisive the use Red Ensign itself was at the time.

As well, Captain Flynn at Against All Flags, notes the use of the Ensign by various crackpots such as Ernst Zundel et al.

One final note: someone (I forget where, but I will post when I find the page again) stated that they supported the use of the Red Ensign because red and white Maple Leaf flag was designed to correspond to Liberal Party colours. Uh, no. The colour scheme was chosen to reflect Canada's national colours, as defined by The Royal Proclamation of George V, 21 November 1921, at the behest of Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden and under the watch of Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Meighan.