[JGoldman10]

Hello. How and why did the Maple Leaf become Canada's national symbol?

[Arctic_Menace]

Well I believe that the Maple Leaf/Maple tree is Canada's national plant.

In the alte 60's, there was a push for a new flag to replace the Red Ensign. This new flag to represent Canada, and would serve as our new, official flag. Numerous designs were sumbitted, but only a few were seriously considered.

This whole movement seemed highly controversial, as War vets and British loyalists accused the government of Lester B. Pearson of turning their backs on their British heritage and roots. There were also protests by people who supported flag designs other than that of the Maple Leaf, which eventually became our flag.

So there's a little bit of Maple Leaf history.


In terms of old history, the Europeans experienced maple syrum, the beautiful colour changing maples, and their large, unique shape. Sure enough, they brought all this back to Europe and showed it to the King, who was like: "alright, eh?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_leaf

[Clogeroo]

Quote:

In the alte 60's, there was a push for a new flag to replace the Red Ensign. This new flag to represent Canada, and would serve as our new, official flag. Numerous designs were sumbitted, but only a few were seriously considered.

This whole movement seemed highly controversial, as War vets and British loyalists accused the government of Lester B. Pearson of turning their backs on their British heritage and roots. There were also protests by people who supported flag designs other than that of the Maple Leaf, which eventually became our flag.

So there's a little bit of Maple Leaf history.

The Red ensign had three maple leaves on it though and had Canada's coat of arms representing the country's post war military significance.



Then were changed to red to reflect Canada's official colours red and white as was originally intended.



I always liked this design out of the flags that were submitted.



This Indian designed flag was kind of cool too.

[GreatBriton]

It was supposed to be red.

Coincidentally, today in the local museum, which has got a giant exhibition split into "AFRICA", "ASIA", EUROPE", "AUSTRALASIA" and "NORTH AMERICA" which shows cultural artefacts and native animals from those continents there is, in the North American section, a Canadian flag.

The caption next to it says that the first visit by a British royal (the Prince of Wales) to Canada occured in 1860. The intention was to have thousands of people lining the streets, with those of English descent wearing a red rose and those of Scottish descent wearing a thistle in a similar way as the British and people in parts of the Commonwealth wear red poppies in November.

However, the crowd decided that they would wear maple leaves that symbolise Canada (the maple leaf was used to symbolise Canada, or what would later become Canada, as far back as 1700), and so the maple leaf ended up on the Canadian flag - albeit 100 years later.

It was drawn red as that's the colour that the maple leaf changes to in autumn.

The number of points on the leaf has no significance; they do not, for instance, represent the ten provinces plus one point for the territories such as the Australian star denotes. In fact, some of the very first Canadian flags made had maple leaves of variously 13 and 15 points or more. The points of the maple leaf were determined by taking various samples of leaves and putting them in a wind tunnel to see what looks the best


An autumn maple leaf

[WDHIII]

lily wrote:

Also, a little known fact is that it was supposed to be green, but one of WDH's colour-blind rellies okayed the design.

Ya know...... I may be colourblind but I recognize GREEN when I see it..