Waves are everywhere. These
cheery hellos or silent goodbyes are loaded with meaning. Especially when our
arms are waving around to swat the hordes of flies that want to be our close
and personal friends on these wet,
buggy, first few days of summer.
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| No waving hello from this friend.. |
At the beginning of
June, before the blackflies were chasing me indoors, I watched a storm blow in
over the lake. The sun cast a brilliant white shine onto the still, shimmering
water but there was a crazy wind to herald the incoming rain. Treetops along
the shore were waving heads of ragtop greenery, bouncing around the sky like
exuberant young people listening to tunes and nodding their heads in time to
the music. Normally a wind like that would have had the lake in an uproar but
instead, the blast of surging air turned the flat lake into a wrinkled silver
sheet with a lacy foam fringe. The freezing cold, extra heavy water was just
too much of a horizontal mountain to move.
However, that colder,
bug-free life as we knew it - is over! The water mountain has lost weight and
the lighter, warmer water now must succumb to the whims of the wind. Last week,
as we watched the heavy fog rolling around, a wind pushing its cotton batten
wisps over the rocky points, I figured the approaching system would only ruffle
the lake just as it had the day before. Ooohh was I mistaken! Within an hour, November
waves were lashing our June shoreline. Raging water was smoothing and clearing
out the beaches. The air, the wet and the roar carried all the marks of a fall
storm. It was a classic Lake Superior move - calm one moment - two metre waves
the next!
But waves do much more
than upset the surface of the water. Waves carry shocks and thoughts and sound and
light. And what would our C150 Canada Day celebrations be without the waving of
our national flag? Indeed waves almost made it onto our nation’s red and white
banner!
The debate over Canada’s
flag design did create waves of discontent. Everyone, of course, wanted a say. In
fact, England’s King George V even got into it. In 1921 he designated red and
white as the official colours for our flag. But it was Lester B. Pearson’s WW1
experience that probably was the biggest influence. In 1914, when he was
serving overseas, he noticed that almost every Canadian battalion had the red
maple leaf as part of its insignia. Pearson vowed that if he returned home he
would somehow try to get the red maple leaf on the Canadian flag.
So, on June 15, 1964,
Lester B Pearson presented his idea for a new flag. Nicknamed the Pearson Pennant,
the design featured three red maple leaves on a white background with vertical
blue sections on the sides. The waves represented Canada’s motto, “from sea to
sea.” But those blue squiggly lines could have been the result of a suggestion
from the famous Group of Seven/WW1 artist A.Y.Jackson. In 1914, before Jackson
enlisted, this famous Group of Seven/WW1 artist made a trip to Algonquin Park
with Tom Thomson. There, he painted his classic work “The Red Maple.” Almost 50
years later, the memories of that camping trip inspired Jackson to design a new
Canadian flag. On a piece of cardboard (which he almost threw out - he used the
back of it for phone numbers!) he painted three maple leaves between horizontal
wavy blue lines on the top and the bottom. The lines represented the rivers
that unite Canada. Although our present flag pattern lacks the waves and bears
only one leaf, there is little doubt that Jackson’s flag submission to Pearson
in a letter dated June 10, 1964, encouraged the Algoma MP and Prime Minister to
complete his personal
campaign promise to give Canada a new flag.
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| A.Y.Jackson's flag design |
During the 1760s, a
Sioux leader known as Wabasha or Chief Red Leaf carried a red maple leaf as his
symbol. In 1782, according to National Archive documents, he was made a
brigadier general of provincial militia in the British army. At the time, other
British officers had flags so Wabasha had one made up too. For his banner he
chose a red maple leaf on a white background. Could Wabasha’s flag be the beginning
of the idea?
A look into the past is
known to ruffle up other waters with waves of nostalgia. But those ones can give
us energy, stir us into action and encourage us to search the old haunts.
Summer is a good time for that. Seek campsites, find renewal in beaches and sit
by an open fire to stare at the stars. That’s wonderful fuel for winter dreams.
With that in mind, I
think I’ll take a summer time cue from the light waves. Their vibrations are giving
sky and water so many vibrant hues; indeed, they are their own flag. And even
if the fog wisps eat up the colour, that’s OK. Better that than a heat wave.
