The Fleurdelisé

When ranking the flags of North America, Quebec's Fleurdelysé was the top Canadian flag (3rd or 4th overall) due to its simpleness and its historic meaning.

Since last Sunday was la Saint-Jean (Baptiste), when all French-Canadians go and get drunk wearing blue and white

The Fleur-de-lys was once the most important symbol of France, that is, being a monarchist symbol, until the French Revolution in which case most people associate the Fleur-de-lys with Québec.

A stylized fleur-de-lys was used as far back as the reign of Louis VI and Louis VII but it was Philip II who used it as a banner and had stitched golden fleur-de-lys on his blue cloak, known as the cosmic cloak. This first banner was blue in background and had many golden fleur-de-lys. A variation of this, with a white background, was latter used as flag of the King's vessels.

In 1365, to honour the holy trinity, Charles V limited the fleur-de-lys to three yet keeping the blue background. There were many varioutions to this flag, the first French banner to flow in Canada was one similar to the three-star fleur-de-lys but the background was white, representing the divine right of the monarch. In fact the last French Royal Standard was white with golden fleur-de-lys with a royal creat on the foreground which included a blue shield with three fleur-de-lys.

Appart from being a royal symbol of France, the fleur-de-lys was also found on many traditional provincial flags such as that of Anjou and Saintonge.

Since Canada was lost to the British before the end of monarchy in France, the fleur-de-lys was a represenation of the ancestral coutnry rather than the monarchist or far-right ideals it is associated with now, in France.

But the Fleur-de-lys wasn't as popular in Quebec, either, until the last century. In the early days, the french used the patriot flag, a Canadian seperation party wanting to form a Canadian Republic (not initially based on language as the mouvement was replicated in Upper Canada as well but since most British were those who had been loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution, they saw no reason to oppose now), that is a tricolour flag that goes, from top to bottom, green-white-red. In fact the fleur-de-lys is only regarded as a Quebecois symbol by the Parti Quebecois rather than other indepedentist parties such as the former FLQ and present MNLQ or the RIN.

The Fleurdelisé, Quebec's present flag was adopted on 21 January 1948. Its reason, because the Federal government refused to adopt a flag that was distinctly Canadian and therefore the Quebecois had to do with their own talking a former civil flag (blue with white crosses) and adding white Fleur-de-Lys. Only Nova Scotia had their present flag (1929) before Quebec did while most of the provinces got theirs in the 60s.

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