Te Flag of Our Fathers? Te Manitoba Provincial Flag and British Cultural Hegemony in Manitoba, 1870–1966 David W. Grebstad Introduction In February 2015, Canada celebrated the fftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian fag. Since its inception, the prevailing narrative of the advent of the modern Canadian fag describes the event as an important, iconic stage of nationalist evolution from British colony to independent nation. At the moment of its genesis, however, this was not a universal sentiment; the detractors of the new Canadian fag were legion. Te debate surrounding the adoption of the fag was acrimonious and ferce, and in the end only the defection of the Québec caucus of the Progressive Conservative Party to support the governing Liberal Party’s new fag design ensured that it was adopted at all. Te story of the national fag debate, as the episode came to be known, is well-trodden ground; less well known is the reaction in several provinces to the lack of British symbolism in the new national fag. Shortly after the modern Canadian fag was hoisted for the frst time on Parliament Hill, the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba adopted provincial fags that retained British symbolism in the form of a modifed Red Ensign; a design which had been used in both ofcial and unofcial capacities as the national fag of Canada for several decades. Tis paper will focus on a little known chapter in Canadian history—the adoption of the provincial fag of Manitoba as a protest against the new Canadian fag. In the year and a half following the adoption of the modern Canadian fag, the people of Manitoba engaged in their own short but turbulent debate about the creation of a unique provincial fag. On 12 May 1966, in a cer- emony ensconced in imperial symbolism that emphasized the British pres- ence in Manitoba during the preceding 300 years, the newly-minted fag of Raven, Vol. 23, 2016 pp. 55–79 ISSN 1071-0043 ©2016 NAVA doi: 10.5840/raven2016235