Country profile – Canada

The maple leaf flag was adopted on 15 February 1965, at the end of the "Great Canadian Flag Debate" launched the previous year by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, who wanted the country to have a symbol of its own, distinct from the Union Jack carried until then on the Canadian Red Ensign.

Out of more than two thousand submissions, the design chosen was proposed by historian George Stanley, inspired by the flag of the Royal Military College in Kingston: a stylized red maple leaf on a white field, flanked by two red bands. Graphic artist Jacques St-Cyr later redrew the leaf with eleven points instead of the original thirteen, after the initial version lost too much detail when seen from a distance.

The new flag was raised for the first time on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on 15 February 1965, a date celebrated ever since as National Flag of Canada Day.

• Red and white: Canada's official national colors, proclaimed by King George V in 1921; red evokes in particular the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers in the First World War, white the snow and peace.
• Maple leaf: a Canadian symbol since the nineteenth century, long before it became an official national emblem, referring to the maple tree, an emblematic species of the country.

Contrary to a common belief, the leaf's eleven points do not stand for the ten provinces or the territories of Canada: the number was chosen purely for graphic reasons, so the leaf would stay legible even at a distance or in strong wind.

The maple leaf on the flag is not an accurate depiction of any single species: its stylized eleven-point silhouette is a graphic design, meant to stay crisp and recognizable from afar, rather than a real maple leaf as it might appear on an actual tree.

George Stanley's original design had thirteen points; graphic artist Jacques St-Cyr simplified it to eleven after finding that the details of the original drawing disappeared once the flag was viewed at small scale or in motion.

The adoption of the new flag in 1965 ended decades of heated national debate: many Canadians, particularly among veterans and those of British descent, remained attached to the Red Ensign and the presence of the Union Jack, while others, especially in Quebec, saw it as too colonial a symbol to represent the whole country.