Former city alderman Bill Cocks stands next to one of Medicine Hat's official city flags. - NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Ahhh, the majestic City of Medicine Hat flag, with its golden prairie, flowing South Saskatchewan River, cog, gear, gas lamp and flames.
Not familiar?
Well, according to the Governor General of Canada, Medicine Hat’s official city flag is not the commonly used blue flag featuring the Medicine Hat man and war bonnet, but rather a yellow-fielded design drawn up two decades ago.
The legally questionable, but in many ways long-forgotten controversy was rekindled this month when the Calgary Herald published a feature detailing several municipal flags from major centres in the province.
It showed a banner many Hatters didn’t recognize, featuring a yellow field bisected by wavy blue line representing the river and adorned by symbols of local industry and gas fields beneath it all.
That’s the design arrived at 25 years ago by the Canadian Heraldic Authority, and it remains the recognized symbol in official channels, even though Hatters voted to reject its use in favour of the blue flag featuring the city’s namesake indigenous symbolism.
Retaining that banner was endorsed by council in 2002.
Bill Cocks, a second-term alderman at the time, supported the switch and wound up retaining one of the heraldic flags.
“I fly it periodically and it gets a lot of questions,” said Cocks, who has a flag pole on the lawn of his home near downtown. He always flies the Maple Leaf on top, but adds other flags below to mark occasions.
For the record, says Cocks, he likes the blue flag, and would like to see the yellow-blue one updated with indigenous symbolism and perhaps the sun, a nod to good weather and alternative energy.
“I recall we debated it (in 2002), but it was squelched fairly quickly,” he said. “It wasn’t popular and it was defeated.”
Since the issue arose and receded so quickly, the story of the flag’s creation is becoming less well-known.
In the late 1990s the Medicine Hat Police Service commissioned a coat of arms from the Heraldic Society to commemorate its centennial anniversary, but according to convention, the city itself would need one first to base the subordinate symbol upon.
Therefore council commissioned its own coat of arms, but as part of the process received a flag design and badge as well.
The resulting yellow-blue flag appears within the city’s and police service’s coat of arms but wasn’t a hit among council members at the time or among the public.
In the early 2000s, citizen Ken Montgomery petitioned council to employ the new flag, and it’s official status, out of a sense of patriotism and a chance to renew civic pride.
In 2002, it was put on display on the pole out front at the city hall plaza and Hatters were encouraged to take part in a non-binding voluntary vote.
They were asked whether to adopt the new flag, or use both alternately in common or official capacities, much the same way Canada has a national anthem (“O Canada”), and a Royal anthem (“God Save the Queen”).
Of 1,300 ballots dropped off at city hall, the public library or online (a first-time pilot project for the city website), 1,104 favoured the former flag.
After the 2002 vote, however, the symbolic flag retreated from the public view, and the blue Medicine Hat flag maintained the position its held since 1973.
That year, Ald. Lucille Moyer boostered for an open call to Hatters to submit designs for a municipal flag – a contest eventually won by Hatter Emily Nott.
Her design incorporated the masthead logo of the News, and the paper’s ownership allowed the use of the trademarked logo free of charge with minor conditions.
It’s been the city’s flag ever since making its debut at the opening of the Maple Avenue bridge in 1974.
It was a point of pride in the Nott family, said her son, Gordon Nott.
“My mother was a very skilled artistic person,” he told the News. “Even to look at her handwriting, or sewing. She loved taking pictures.
“(The flag), I mean, I don’t think most people think about it on a daily basis, but it’s our city flag.”
