What to give a country on its one hundredth birthday? This question was already on the mind of at least one American in the Department of State in 1964.
With just over three years before the centenary of Canada’s Confederation it was none too early to start thinking about gifts.
And Raymond J. Barrett, the Canadian Desk Officer at Foggy Bottom, had an idea.
Relations between Canada and the United States were famously peaceful. The phrase “the world’s longest undefended border” had been in use since at least the 1940s. It was frequently applied in the postwar era, for instance in this 1964 issue of The Rotarian.
How best to celebrate this harmony? Barrett thought it would be “particularly meaningful” if the United States could return to Canada “any captured Canadian battle flags and similar trophies in United States possession.”
As Barrett correctly noted, “Fear of the US had much to do with the establishment of the Canadian Confederation in 1867.”
What more “thoughtful testimonial,” he argued, could be given to the intervening century of peace?
Barrett wrote to a colleague at the Pentagon to follow up on his idea. But he admitted one possible problem: “I am not sure that we have such battleflags or trophies.”
There is no more correspondence in the archival file containing Barrett’s gift idea. One might imagine he received a call from his contact in the Office of the Secretary of Defense confirming that, indeed, the United States had no Canadian battleflags in its possession. How could it? (According to Veterans Affairs, Canada’s chronological list of “Wars and conflicts” begins with the “South African War” in 1899.)
And yet the United States, to this day, does hold flags captured by United States forces in Canada.
In April 1813, American forces attacked the city of York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada. The attackers made off with the city’s Royal Standard. The large flag measures 35 feet by 25 feet (that is to say 10.668 metres x 7.62 metres) and is still held at the Museum of the United States Naval Academy.
Photo courtesy of the United States Naval Academy.
Among the other trophies kept by the Museum are several ships’ flags also captured during the War of 1812. (For more on the Royal Standard, including some photos past and present, see this blog post.)
Perhaps Barrett’s mind had drifted to this violent history of relations between the United States and British possessions in pre-Confederation Canada?
Barrett’s note, while little more than a curious tidbit in the United States’ national archives, is illuminating on two accounts.
First is Barrett’s observation that fear of the United States did contribute to the creation of Canada. (I’ve tried to put this point in context, recently, with an essay here.) Barrett, of course, was off on his chronology. Any time that American forces might have taken trophies in Canada would have occurred before Confederation, and even before the Militia Act of 1855. Trophies taken in the War of 1812 would not have been Canadian battleflags, but British ones. And such trophies were indeed taken and kept, just like the Royal Standard at the Naval Academy.
But this blurring of British history with the history of a federated Canada is instructive, too.
While is not clear whether Barrett or anyone at the Pentagon considered “returning” the Royal Standard to Canada, the gift would have been as welcome as a lump of coal.
Barrett’s idea came at a time of great worry about the future of Canada itself. Less than a year before Barrett penned his note, Prime Minister Lester Pearson told American diplomats that the “gravity of the crisis about French Canada could not be underestimated … [it was the] most difficult and dangerous issue with which his administration would have to deal.” The State Department’s memorandum of Pearson’s remarks noted that “He” - Pearson - “obviously believes that the Confederation is at stake.”
Part of Pearson’s solution to the crisis was to build up the idea of Canada as a country in its own right. A flag was a central and symbolic part of his plan. In the federal election of 1963, Pearson promised that Canada would get a new flag if his Liberal Party formed the government. (Perhaps this promise of a flag had indirectly inspired Barrett!)
But in 1960s Canada, a returned Canadian battleflag (if such a thing could have existed) would have served as a reminder of American power — a reminder Canadians neither wanted nor needed in a decade when Canadians were increasingly wary of their southern neighbour’s power. And the return of a British battleflag to Canada would have cut against the efforts of Pearson and other leaders who sought to build a sense of Canada distinct from that which had come before Confederation.
Credit: Duncan Cameron/Library and Archives Canada/PA-136153
Flags, it seems, were on everyone’s mind in the 1960s.
About a year after Barrett’s note, on February 15, 1965, Canada finally received a flag. This one, of course, was not returned to Canada, but made in Canada.
***
The odd little document from which the above is drawn can be found here: “Centenary of Canadian Confederation - Possibility of Returning Captured Battleflags,” Memorandum for Captain James G. Andrews, USN, OSD/ISA, The Pentagon, from Raymond J. Barrett, Canadian Desk Officer. March 9, 1964. Record Group 59, Bureau of European Affairs, Country Director for Canada, Records Relating to Military Matters, 1942-1966, Box 1, “US-Canada Basic Defense Relationships,” National Archives and Research Administration, College Park, Maryland.