Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Spacing Wire pointed out that the National Post has run a contest to redesign Toronto's flag (grand prize a National Post mug, hopefully unused). Their chief complaint, "what's with the obsession with the Maple Leaf?"
Torontoist wants to be the voice of dissent and gives our reasons why the flag shouldn't be redesigned.
First, the flag's blue and white colour scheme reminds us a little of the Quebec flag. Now we don't think that the Toronto separatist movement has gotten much traction lately and McGuinty's Liberals haven't been as abusive to the city as the Harris/Eves Tories but you never know what the future of city-province relations will be. The flag serves as a symbol of our willingness, desire and ability to split off from the rest of Ontario and cripple the province should it abuse us again.
Second, that much maligned maple leaf, reminds us that while we may want to separate we don't REALLY want to separate just have different living arrangements. Toronto really is like a teenager clamouring for a separate room, a bigger allowance, but not really wanting to move out just yet.
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Oh. My. God. A National Post MUG! Be still my beating heart! I can't fire up photoshop fast enough!
haha, yeah, this is pretty ridiculous. i really, really like the toronto flag: it is so much better than pretty much any other city's flag in existence, isn't it?
maybe they are miffed that it's red, white and blue :-P
i'm no design expert but that flag looks like it was the winner of a grade 7 art class contest
The maple leaf looks like it fell down a crevasse. Besides, what's wrong with a design contest that won't actually change the official flag? Even if it is for the National Post.
Maybe the flag's designer was taking the piss by putting the maple leaf there. Sort of like they were saying "Toronto: The puckered hoop of Canada".
If you flip the flag so it's upside, it will represent something quite different than the letter T with a maple leaf.
(You may or may not see a pair of legs, with our nation's leaf acting as a sort-of olive branch)
actually, my kid DID design that when he was in Grade 7. i stuck the maple leaf on as an afterthought while driving him to school -- i still can't believe they accepted it. feel free to change it, it could only get better
After the Province amalgamated the five cities and the borough of East York into the Mega City of Toronto, the then new city council needed a neutral flag which represented all of the amalgamated regions.
Rather than opt for spending an estimated $100,000 in running 'a design a new flag for megacity toronto contest', they simply chose the runner up from an earlier design contest.
The two white right angles are an abstraction of the twin towers of toronto city hall, it also doubles as an outline of the letter 'T' which we'll leave to the national post to decipher its importance.
In short, the flag doesn't suck.
no, it sucks
Sorry - does a city really need a flag? Even more importantly - does a city crippled by deficit and debt need to spend money redesigning an existing flag?