Learn the stories behind Canada’s provincial and territorial flags

The flag of Ontario was first raised on May 21, 1965. The Union Jack—you can probably recognize that—sits in the upper quarter. The shield (part of the province’s official coat of arms) shows the red cross of St. George, to symbolize England, and three gold maple leaves, to symbolize—you guessed it—Canada.

Quebec’s flag is often called the “Fleurdelisé”, a nod to its French roots. The white cross on a blue “field” is meant to recall a military banner; the four flowers are also symbolic of France. (The fleur-de-lis is a symbol of French royalty.)

Like the Ontario provincial flag, Manitoba’s shows the Union Jack and the provincial shield, featuring the cross of St. George. A buffalo standing on a rock replaces the maple leaves. (Manitoba’s official coat of arms also includes a gold helmet and crown, a beaver, a prairie crocus—the province’s floral emblem—and a unicorn.)

This flag wasn’t adopted by the provincial legislature until 1980; the deceptively simple design was done by Canadian painter Christopher Pratt. The white part is meant to represent snow and ice and the blue is meant to represent the sea. (Red symbolizes “human effort” and gold, “confidence in the future.”) The trident? Newfoundland and Labrador’s reliance on fishing. The two red triangles? One stands for the mainland, and the other, the island. The arrow, when the flag is hung as a banner, is a nod to “sacrifices made in war”: it’s meant to look like a sword.

This flag looks nearly identical to P.E.I.’s shield, with the addition of the red and white bars around the perimeter (and the rectangular shape, obviously). It might be the most literal of Canada’s flags: the lion appears on Prince Edward’s coat of arms too, so including it on the flag acknowledges the man that the island is named after. And the image of the island and oak trees is meant to represent…an island with oak trees. (The red oak is P.E.I.’s provincial tree.)

Like P.E.I., the Nova Scotia flag is simply the province’s shield stretched into a flag shape. The blue cross is a shout out to Scotland, with the colours reversed.(On Scotland’s flag, it’s a white cross on a blue background.) The shield-modelled flag features Scotland’s shield: a royal lion inside a double red border on a field of yellow. So the flag is a shield within a shield. Inception flag!

New Brunswick gets its name from the Duchy of Brunswick, a historical state in Germany. The land belonged to King George III the year this Canadian province was established (1784). The Brunswick coat of arms pictured a gold lion, so its inclusion on this provincial flag symbolizes both the Duchy of Brunswick and England. The ship, meanwhile, acknowledges New Brunswick’s economic ties to shipbuilding and shipping.

The Alberta flag—first used in 1967—depicts the province’s shield smack in the middle of a blue background (eye catching!). The image on the shield features mountains, foothills, prairies, and grain fields—in other words, Alberta’s various landscapes.

Like many provinces, B.C. duplicated its shield for its flag design, and included the Royal Union Flag as a nod to its British colony history. The blue lines symbolize the Pacific Ocean, and the sun symbolizes the fact that B.C. is the most westerly province in the country.

The current Saskatchewan flag design came about because of country-wide flag-designing competition (that was a thing?) that the government launched in 1968. The winning flag was chosen out of more than 4,000 submissions. Contest winner Anthony Drake picked green to emphasize Saskatchewan’s forests to the north, and gold to represent its grain fields to the south. The flower is the province’s floral emblem (the western red lily).

As with the Saskatchewan flag, the Yukon’s flag came out of a public design competition. It was a student from Haines Junction who won. No shock: the green panel symbolizes forests, white is of course snow, and blue, the territory’s rivers and lakes. The centre panel features the territorial coat of arms and fireweed, the Yukon’s official flower. It’s hardy, and one of the prettiest flowers in the North. So you get a spot on the flag, fireweed!

Not wanting to buck the 1968-1969 trend, the Northwest Territories used public input to settle on a flag design. The competition winner was from Manitoba, but apparently knew enough about N.W.T to use blue and white to symbolize ice, snow, and water. The wavy blue line on the shield represents the Northwest Passage and the red portion represents the tundra. The white fox face—an Arctic fox?—is a nod to the territory’s fur trade.

Nunavut’s flag wasn’t granted until April 1, 1999, the same day the Nunavut Act came into effect. The brightly coloured flag features white, blue, and gold, to symbolize “the riches of the land, sea, and sky” and red, as a reference to Canada. The flag design includes the inuksuk and the Niqirtsituk star, which are also part of the coat of arms.