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Ontario (Canada)

by zeljko heimer

Ottawa-Carleton
Toronto
Franco-Ontariens or Ontarois

Ottawa - Carleton

by christophe pinette

Last month I was in Ottawa and I saw the attached flag. Does anyone know what it is? Is it the flag of the city of Ottawa? No one in Ottawa could tell me. It was flying next to the Canadian National Flag and the Provincial flag of Ontario.
Christophe Pinette - 1996-08-08

This flag looked familiar so I browsed through the few copies I have of _Flagscan_. I found the flag, or rather one that looks very similar to the GIF Christophe made. The only difference is that the white Y based on the hoist is made up of wavy (not straight) lines, and that the maple leaf is set in the centre of the flag. I guess these things are not easy to see when flags are hoisted. The flag illustrated in _Flagscan_ is the flag of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. I suppose it is what Christophe saw. The flag was adopted 26 June 1985 by the Regional Council and is a simpler version of the coat of arms. The white wavy section represents the rivers Ottawa and Rideau, while the maple leaf indicates the Canadian capital.
The City of Ottawa flies a different flag, a tricolour of (from the hoist to the fly) royal purple, red and blue. Royal purple was put in because Queen Victoria made Ottawa the capital, while red and blue were the colours of the Liberal and Conservative parties at the time the flag was adopted, in 1901. In 1987 the whole Ottawa arms was put on the middle red panel.
Source: Jaques Cyr: "Flags in the Ottawa Valley", _Flagscan_, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1993, pp. 11-16
Jan Oskar Engene - 1996-08-10

Toronto flag

|--------------------------------------------------------|
|                                                        |
|                                                        |
|----____                 DEEP                   ____----|
|        ----____          BLUE          ____----        |
|     WHITE      ----___          ___----  WHITE         |
|----____               \        /               ____----|
|        ----____        \      /        ____----        |
|                ----__   |    |   __----                |
|                     |   | __ |   |                     |
|                     |   |/  \|   |      DEEP           |
|     DEEP            |   (    )   |       BLUE          |
|      BLUE           |  __\  /__  |                     |
|                     | /  RED   \ |                     |
|                     | \__    __/ |                     |
|                     |    -||-    |                     |
|                     |            |                     |
|---------------------|------------|---------------------|

Drawn by james dignan

The white band is supposed to resemble a T for the city's name, but also recalls the appearance of the City Hall building. The flag was adopted on the 140th anniversary of Toronto in 1974.
I got this information from Kevin Harrington's article "Seven Cities in Search of a Flag" published in the Communications of the XI International Congress of Vexillology (Madrid, 1985). The City of Toronto is one of the seven administrative units making up Toronto. The others are Metropolitan Toronto (covering the whole of the city - the City of Toronto is only the city centre) and the cities of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and York. All of them have flags.
Jan Oskar Engene

If you turn the picture over, maybe you recognize Adam (the father of mankind) with the maple-leaf... I think it is only a humorous explanation of this flag.
Jan Oskar Engene

Ontarois

by jan oskar engene - 1996-08-15

Adopted (first flown): 25 September 1975
Designer: Unknown
Proportions: 1:2

There are about 535.000 Francophone people in Ontario, and a flag for this community was adopted by the Association Canadienne-Francaise de l'Ontario.
This simple flag consists of two panels, dark green at the hoist and white at the fly end. A white fleur de lis is set on the green panel, while a dark green stylized trillium flower is set on the white panel.
The fleur de lis is of course the symbol of Frenchness, while Ontario's floral emblem is the symbolic connection to the province. The white trillium was adopted as Ontario's floral emblem in 1937, as a by-product of a failed effort to find a national flower that could be planted on the graves of Canadian soldiers that died abroad. The trillium is very stylized (as are also the arms of Ontario) and serves in this form as the logo of the provincial government. It looks a bit like a triquetra, a Christian symbol of the Trinity.
Sources: Kevin Harrington: 'The Flags of the Francophonie in Canada', _Flag Bulletin_, No. 147, 1992, pp.139-152.
_Symbols of Nationhood_, Minister of Supply and Services, Ottawa, 1991
jan oskar engene - 1996-08-15