Timed for the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Canadian national flag, this article speaks to this flag as the culmination of a post-Second World War tradition that developed out of, and as a counterpoint to, the earlier flag tradition of Canadian banners based on the British ensign pattern or those which utilized emblems of British and French heritage.

In the 1950s and 1960s, all sides in the struggle over civil rights used the U.S. flag in different and evolving ways, competing for the power of the nation’s primary symbol. This article traces in scholarly detail how flag use influenced and gave images to the era.

The government agency that did the most to spread the flag across the western United States in its first century was not the Army, not the Navy, but the Indian Department. Its “presentation flags,” often of a variant design with eagles or coats of arms in their cantons or with alternate star patterns, combine with the military’s standard flags in this article based on many primary sources.