![Canada's Flag A Search For A Country](../images/titlebar2.gif) Chapter 7
Decision
This discussion
began with the assertion that the fight for a
flag was a
fight to save
Canada. Our Liberal caucus recognized the
separation of
Quebec from
Canada, the collapse of Confederation, as one of
the
distinct
possibilities of the future. With the exception
of Ralph Cowan
(YorkHumber)
every Liberal member bore this dread possibility
in
mind.
The perspective of
John Diefenbaker, and his hard core of western
supporters, was
different. In charity one may say that
Diefenbaker did
not apprehend the
danger, but this inability to see was partly a
resolve
not to see. Like
Nelson at Copenhagen he applied his glass to his
blind
eye.1 When in midJanuary 1963 he knew
that Confederation was in
grave trouble, his
solution was a "Round Table." Arthur
Blakely wrote
from Ottawa:
A proposal for a
great national conference to "round out
Confederation"
was advanced by Prime Minister Diefenbaker
at the
Conservative Party annual meeting.
He told cheering
delegates, however, that he rejected utterly
the theory that
the Canadian Confederation "is about to dis-
integrate" as
being the counsel of despairing defeatism.
"I am not a
defeatist," he said yesterday.
In a dramatic,
eleventhhour addition to his speech, how-
ever, he replied
at length and in some detail to Premier Lesage
and National Union
Leader Daniel Johnson, who had agreed in
the Quebec
Legislature Thursday that Confederation has
failed
to achieve the
aims and objectives the Fathers of Confederation
had set forth
almost a century ago and that "the hour of
the
last chance"
was already at hand.
Mr. Diefenbaker
mentioned neither of the Quebec leaders by
name in this
untexted speech in which he replied on scribbled
notes.
The reference,
however, was crystal clear. . . .
Some there were,
Mr. Diefenbaker said, who were spreading
the creed of
separatism "for their own
purposes"purposes
not necessarily
related to separatism as a solution to French
Canada's problems.
"The idea
that Canada is about to disintegrate," the
Prime
Minister declared
warmly, "has no place in my thinking or in
that of my
colleagues in the Cabinet today."2
Not sharing
Diefenbaker's optimism, others in Canada were
anxious
and insecure, and
they believed that Canada was well into the
decade of
discontent. The
Diefenbaker government was defeated in the
ensuing
general election
of 8 April 1963. The standing of the parties
revised as of
February 1964 was
129 Liberals, 95 Progressive Conservatives, 24
Social
Crediters and 17
New Democrats in a House of 265. 3
It thus became
Pearson's challenge to preside as Canada's first
minister when
Quebec was exhibiting serious symptoms of
discontent. It
was his
opportunity and his duty to nurse French Canada
through her
crisisa
crisis of identity. He offered a healing image,
the maple leaf,
living evidence of
the land universally beloved. The symbol spoke to
all
Canadians, not of
empire nor of powers or principalities, but of
soil. The
symbol reminded
French Canada of what was undeniably and
incredibly
deartheir
native land!
I believe that
most Canadians knew that Canada was in trouble.
Commencing
in 1963 the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police had been concerned
about the
activities of the Front de Libération du Quebec
(the
Quebec Liberation
Front). On the night of 20 April 1963, the FLQ,
realizing that the
RCMP was a dangerous hindrance to its movement,
threw a bomb
through the window of "C" Division
headquarters in
Montreal. That
same night a watchman died when a bomb exploded
in a
garbage container.
During the following months police and army
experts
dismantled
numerous bombs which had been placed in
mailboxes.4 The
movement, which
finally drew Canada into the "October
Crisis" of
1970, showed
purpose and muscle. Its declared objective was to
establish
a socialist state,
separate and distinct from Canada, and to do so
by
force.5
From the
government's point of view, Mr. Diefenbaker owed
a moral
duty to Canada to
approach the flag question with this threat to
national
unity in mind. His
parliamentary support was by no means entirely
from
the west. With 8
seats in Quebec and 27 and 4, respectively, in
the
neighboring
provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick 6 he ought to have
assessed the
danger and joined forces with the new prime
minister, Lester
Pearson, to combat
that danger. The fact is that some Tory members
were acutely anxious. While many of
their numbers were fearful of the
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