Plenty of Nothing

Stikine Territory

Up until this week I was going around with an unfounded notion that I knew my Canadian history.  And then I came across this map, and while finding out about it I realized that I know pretty much none of the history of British Columbia.  I'm even more abashed because the main character in the story is a guy named Douglas.  

BC was far and away the largest Canadian province when it entered Confederation in 1871, because it was in its own way an assemblage of parts. The mainland (first as New Caledonia, then British Columbia), Vancouver Island, and the Queen Charlottes were all separate colonies at the beginning of the 1860s -- though the entire non-Haida governmental apparatus of the Queen Charlotte Colony could have fit into a drawer in the desk of Governor James Douglas in Victoria.  Sir James was either governor or administrator of all of the West Coast colonies.  He's a bit like Lord Monck in the east, who himself was governor of everything in the early 1860s.  Handing control of multiple colonies to the same man was just London's way of saying it wanted Confederation to happen, quickly.  

The colonial organization of BC was spurred on by a series of gold rushes, and it was the Stikine gold rush of 1862 that led Sir James to petition London to carve that area off of its enormous North-Western Territory and put it in another of his desk drawers.  The Stikine Territory occupied what is now the northwestern corner of British Columbia plus a strip of the Yukon.  It was very sparsely inhabited and cut off from the sea by the Alaska Panhandle, and within a year Douglas had got it annexed to the expanding British Columbia.  Today, with some border changes, it is the largest and least populous riding in the provincial legislature.  Here's how the indigenous Tahltan people look at it:

When gold was discovered on the Stikine River in 1862, it was still our country. The Governor of the crown colony of British Columbia then organized it into the Stikine Territory. It was administered by British Columbia. In 1863, Governor Douglas claimed all territory north to the 60th parallel and west to what is now the British Columbia - Alberta border. This territory then became part of British Columbia ... " On 20 July 1871, the crown colony of British Columbia entered Confederation. That is how we became part of a province in the country of Canada. Notice that we did not sign a treaty with the governments of British Columbia or Canada. That is the reason we are talking about land claims with them now.

Gothic

Parliament Hill

Champlain!

Peace Tower

C. W. Jefferys

Charles William Jefferys (1869-1951) is Canada's historical illustrator par excellence.  Born in England, he emigrated to Canada around the age ten, and developed into one of those Canadian artists who took to heart the fact that they and their new country were of the same generation.  His renderings of Canadian historical subjects remain in many cases the definitive image; for example, Étienne Brûlé at the Mouth of the Humber" and "Rebels Marching Down Yonge Street".  Douglas

The 1963 Canadian Art Magazine Flag Contest

If the editors of Canadian Art magazine had been in charge of Canada in 1963 this would be our flag today.  The magazine, in conjunction with Weekend Magazine/Perspectives, awarded designer Rolland Lavoie first prize (and $2000) in a replace-the-Red-Ensign competition, and featured his design on the cover of the September/October 1963 issue.

First impression: Ugh. 

Second impression: It's similar to the flag adopted by Greenland in 1985, in a way.  Except that the Greenlandic flag looks like something, a northern sunset, or an iceberg reflected in the sea.  Then there's Japan's flag, though why we would want to play up our relationship with Japan just as we're scaling back our relationship with Britain is puzzling.  South Korea's?  It is like a design based on a second-hand report of the South Korean flag, drawn far away by someone unfamiliar with the concepts of yin and yang.

But yin and yang are at the heart of the contest.  Many of the submissions attempt to reconcile the Two Solitudes in some visual manner.  One even resorts to a Venn diagram.  The intent of Rolland Lavoie is plainly to show the coming together of English (redcoat) and French (bluecoat) in a perfect circle of unity.  A disc is an available heraldic device, though the sense you get here is that it's included because Platonic forms were in in the Sixties.  How long would it have taken for us to start calling it the puck?

My problems with this flag: 1) circles are undynamic; 2) white is boring; 3) it makes deux nations our defining characteristic.

Second prize:

Now we're talking.  But still too much white.  Third and fourth prize winners:

Third prize is just plain weird but it anticipates Connect Four by a few years.  The flag with the white maple leaves in the red canton on a blue field suffers from the same problem as the winner -- it looks too much like another country's flag.  The entry with the line of ten stars is the most openly satirical and I'm surprised it even received acknowledgement let alone a $100 cheque.  You could call it the Ten Future States flag.  The entry with the blue and white halves seems to have inspired or been inspired by the Coast Guard flag.

The blue and gold design by Mrs. P. Derraugh Kloepfer of Fort Nelson is the most original entry.  Her idea is to use the flag's motion to animate the northern lights, an under-utilized Canadian symbol.  But it also looks like a barfed-on tablecloth.  The red flag would do fine for a Japanese prefecture, or a pavilion at Expo '67.

Some honourable-mentions were published in black and white.

Some of these have a Canadian Army feel, and may have been copied directly from the sides of tanks, where they passed the basic flag test, to be so identifiable that your friends don't shoot at you.  The final honourable-mention, by painter William Kurelek, is way too busy.

Could you image waving any of these flags at an international hockey game?  For me, maybe Jacque Sneep's three maple leaves on a blue and red background, if they were gold instead of white.  Douglas

Behind the Trail King

At the Sign of the Bear

Readers of Plenty of Nothing will know that I like to have a camera on me to document the architectural details of downtown Ottawa as I head for work.  This morning I was snapping this frieze on Sparks Street when a commissionaire came outdoors and started claiming that it's against the law to take photographs of government buildings.  This a block away from the most photographed building in the country.  A short exchange of views ensued and then I passed on my way.  Whatever they're up to in there must be some secret ... but yelling about in the street might not be the best approach for keeping it so.  Douglas

Canadian Tire Money

We all have it.  We all carry it in our wallets.  Why the hell don't we just use it as money?