Image: Public domain
When I scroll down the emoji list on my phone, after all the smileys and pulsating hearts, the camels and horses, tennis racquets and golf clubs, I come to a section displaying flags. Flags of all colours and descriptions, most of which look as if they are from a child’s colouring book. There is the black and white chequered Indie car racing flag, the Jolly Roger pirate flag, the Buddhist (or is it Gay Pride?) flag, and then rows and rows of national flags. My phone has more than 30 rows of flags, with 7 flags in each row. Considering that there are just fewer than 200 recognized countries in the world, there must be a few extras, subnational flags of some sort. Between the 50 US states, 13 Canadian provinces and territories, the 7 Australian states and territories, the subunits of the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany etc, there have to be lots of other flags out there. Some of them are quite similar in design (considering that there are only so many ways to design a flag). On my phone, no less than 21 flags have the Union Jack in the left top corner, in flag-speak referred to as the “canton”. While I clearly recognize the flags of Australia and New Zealand, most are not familiar. They must represent some microdot remnant of the British Empire, like St. Helena (recently made familiar to many because the hantavirus ship stopped there).
Many of these flags have the Union Jack on a crimson red or dark blue background (“defaced” in vexillology or flag-speak, with a design of some sort), although Niue has a yellow ensign while the British Indian Ocean Territory–you know, those remote islands that Britain depopulated in the 1960s so it could turn them into a giant airbase for the USAF, known as Diego Garcia, and which because of pressure from the displaced natives it tried to return to Mauritius and then lease back over the objections of the US government–has wavy blue lines on a white background. It is “defaced” with a Crown and palm tree, not a B-52. Many other similar flags, such as Ontario’s–which is based on the red ensign-are “defaced” with a coat of arms in the fly. Almost all such flags represent territories with a past or present connection to Britain, with the notable exception of Hawaii. The then king of Hawaii incorporated the Union Jack into the design of his Hawaiian kingdom flag in the vain hope that the Royal Navy might protect him from a US takeover. Obviously, it didn’t work.
Wikipedia has a full list of Union Jack related flags, past and present, including the flag of Vancouver Island. It is a dark blue ensign, “defaced” with the seal of the Colony of Vancouver Island, with the Union Jack in the canton. None of the territorial flags are copyrighted although there may be legal limitations on how a flag can be used or displayed. In Canada, just about anything goes, including flying it upside-down if you are displeased with the government about something. I have written about copyright and flags in the past, noting how the Australian government had to license from its designer the right to reproduce the flag it declared to represent the Aboriginal people of Australia. A flag can be considered a creative design and if it can be attributed to an individual artist or designer (who is not long dead), then it could be protected by copyright, especially if it is not an official flag of some kind. Generally national flags, even if designed by an individual, are in the public domain because the individual would have been commissioned to produce the work, or sufficient time has elapsed to ensure that any copyright has expired. For example, the national flag of New Zealand was designed by Royal Navy officer and noted explorer Sir Albert Hastings Markham (1841-1918) in 1869.
The flag of Vancouver Island, which is the subject of this blog post, has its own history. It was created, or perhaps re-created, by historian Michael Halloran, who has just passed away at the age of 82. If he held the copyright on this flag, it would be protected under Canadian copyright law for another 70 years, but Halloran did not assert copyright over the design, claiming he had no right to do so since it belonged to the former colonial government, and to the Crown. He is probably correct. According to a story in the local paper, the Times-Colonist, Halloran spent 15 years researching the VI flag before it finally saw the light of day in 1988 (or re-emerged into the light of day, depending on what you choose to believe).
In 1865, Royal Assent was granted to British colonies to fly flags carrying colonial identification to identify ships that they operated. At that time, Vancouver Island was a separate Crown Colony, with its own Governor and Assembly. It had impressive government buildings, even though its settler population was small. (Indigenous peoples had no representation). It remained a separate entity until being merged with the mainland colony of British Columbia by the Colonial Office in late 1866. In theory then, Vancouver Island could have produced its own flag. It is not known if any such colonial VI flags were ever created or flown although it is unlikely, and there is no known historical reference to such a flag. While the government of the day did operate some vessels, such as the SS Beaver, a steam-driven ship used for trading and surveying, the vessel was owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and probably flew the HBC’s red ensign. But none of these inconvenient facts stopped Halloran.
He studied correspondence between the Colonial Office in London and the colonial government in Victoria and obtained drawings of the design approved for placement on the blue ensign. It was derived from the Great Seal of the colony, designed by Benjamin Wyon, engraver at the Royal Mint (Chief Engraver of the Seals) in London. The seal that Wyon designed in 1849, when Vancouver Island was first declared a Crown colony, incorporated several symbols that Wyon, sitting in his Dickensian office on the banks of the Thames, must have imagined represented the settlement. They included the trident of Neptune and the Caduceus of Hermes, representing the sea and commerce respectively. The seal also includes a pine cone, representing forestry, and a beaver sitting on a small island. A sea otter would have been a more historically accurate representation as it was the sea otter trade that first put Vancouver Island on the world map, literally, in the late 1700s. By the mid 19th century however, the sea otter trade was over, with the animals driven almost to extinction by over-harvesting. (Sea otter colonies on the west coast of the Island have recently been restored through reintroduction of animals from Alaska). Beavers exist on Vancouver Island although trade in beaver pelts was never a major part of the economy of the Island, unlike the mainland or other parts of Canada. But a beaver would certainly symbolize the colony’s association with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which originally administered the colony on behalf of the Crown. Imagine Wyeth in his office designing seals for the far-flung empire, incorporating imaginative symbols representing these distant lands, pelicans, mining tools, Chinese junks, coconuts—and beavers.
Halloran took the essentials of Wyeth’s design and had a sample flag made by the Victoria Flag Shop. It was officially flown at the BC Legislature in Victoria in 1999 to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Colony of Vancouver Island. It is widely flown on Vancouver Island to this day, to mark Islanders insistence that life on the Island is different from life on the Mainland (of BC). For one thing, it rains less. And the legacy of Michael Halloran lives on in the form of his non-copyrighted lost flag of the former Colony of Vancouver Island.
© Hugh Stephens, 2026. All Rights Reserved