Flag represents a blank canvas

It’s nice to have a nice flag. Two clichés in the first sentence, which is perfect for an image which has such a general use. Flags do have to fit in everywhere.

What do we know about the idea behind the Canadian flag? First, it is not intrinsically political. A tree leaf and a bright colour — perhaps a Liberal colour, but we opted from the beginning to ignore that.

After all, Canadian political parties don’t own colours. Summer green matters. But red is our agreed primary autumnal colour. And, from a mythological point of view, at least in central and eastern Canada, autumn is thought of as the primary Canadian season. Green is not the beloved Canadian colour of nature. Golden yellow and burnished red come close. What follows is every variety of white, from gently falling powder snow to driving snow, from fresh new snowbanks to crusty old ones. These colours are all beloved or accepted or expected. Green grass, on the other hand, is something to be mowed.

Our reality is that through myriad political battles we ended up with a cheery flag evoking nature. And after all, it is another Canadian cliché that we have a surplus of nature. So that is all fine.

In the ugly political process of getting the Maple Leaf, we escaped symbols of past imperial flags, to say nothing of racial or ethnic symbols or representations of geography conquered or owned.

Not bad. All the things we escaped are what makes the flag such a cheery rectangle of colour recognizable as being somehow from Canada.

I think that is why Canadians have been largely happy to fly it or wave it or stick it on their cars.

There is a certain innocence in all of this. Is it dangerous innocence? Not really. After all, Canada is much scarred, as are all nation-states. We can’t deny that large or small parts of the population have been victimized for short or long periods of time; but then, no country can. We have avoided civil wars, coups d’état and dictatorships, which is a rare success in this world.

But innocent we are not. The thing about a flag which suggests neither race nor ethnicity nor conquest nor ownership is that it represents a bit of a blank canvas. People can try to paint their own emotions or beliefs onto it.

What about those guys who tried to occupy a prime cut of Ottawa and didn’t seem to respect the most basic rules of representative democracy? Can they take ownership of the flag and somehow desecrate its innocence or its non-political imagery? Probably not.

After all, anyone can put the flag up on their front porch. We have no idea what goes on inside that house. Perhaps pasta is being overcooked. Perhaps property taxes are not being paid. Perhaps people are being hurt.

Most citizens seem to feel that those guys, with their hot tubs and macho gear, acted badly in Ottawa. They wrongly damaged the reputation of most truckers, who opposed both the occupation and its loutish rudeness. Who would want to be associated with such behaviour?

I heard and read everywhere people saying that this was a misuse of the flag. The thing is, those guys had the right to this misuse, providing they weren’t breaking the law. But the laws in question have nothing to do with the flag.

If anything I felt that this was a difficult but positive experience. Citizens were forced to think about their flag in a less innocent way. Was this activity something they wanted identified with their piece of cloth? Probably not.

So the maple leaf and its flag came out of it all a little less innocent. Most people discovered that there were uses or images or ideologies with which they were uncomfortable seeing the flag associated.

That’s a good thing. A step away from naiveté.