The First Flag of the Canadian Merchant Marine

Autor: J. R. Baldwin
Rok vydání: 1966
Předmět:
Zdroj: Canadian Historical Review. 47:136-145
ISSN: 1710-1093
0008-3755
DOI: 10.3138/chr-047-02-03
Popis: THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL STEP by a Canadian government along the road to the legal establishment a d official recognition ofa distinctive Canadian flag was taken for the Canadian merchant marine. The events took place between 1888 and 1892 and involved three prime ministers, Macdonald, Abbott, and Thompson; the ministry principally concerned was the Department of Marine and Fisheries. When it began Macdonald was in the second year of his last full term as prime minister. The son of his steadfast old friend of Confederation days, Sir Charles Tupper, had recently been named Minister of Marine and Fisheries. The young Charles Hibbert Tupper, still in his 'thirties, energetic to the point of brashness, would see this matter through to its conclusion, beyond the death of the ageing leader. The events were widely spaced. Delays were not entirely deliberate; nor were they merely the evidence of a more leisurely pace when despatches moved by surface vessel and a mission to Washington was a maior undertaking. The marine flag was a secondary item of ministerial nd governmental business. Lesser matters tend to be set aside when larger subiects are pressing and many more important topics were troubling the administration. Norquay in Manitoba had ndt given up his battle against the C.P.R. monopoly. In the east, Mercier was striving to kindle fires of regionalism that could harm the federation. The Atlantic Fisheries Conference in Washington took time and attention, as did the later meeting held there to discuss disputes over sealing in the Behring Sea. The controversy over the Jesuit Estates Act in Quebec had no sooner begun to fade than the Manitoba schools question was in the offing. The Prime Minister himself was weary and concerned about his own future. In this atmosphere the flag question was from time to time pushed to one side-but never forgotten.
Databáze: OpenAIRE