Pole Position

In 2015, I curated a small display at the Canadian Museum of History to mark the Canadian flag’s fiftieth birthday on February 15. It featured recently rediscovered cardboard maquettes from the final days of the parliamentary flag committee’s deliberations in 1964. Transferred to the Human History Division of the National Museum in 1966, these preliminary models resurfaced in storage only in early 2014. Ensuring that they were exhibited in conjunction with the anniversary became — for this vexillologist turned curator — a passion project.

In the early 2010s, academics and pundits warned that federal heritage institutions risked becoming propagandists of a triumphalist version of Canada’s past that privileged “the military and the monarchy.” In this context, my colleagues and I anticipated that some suspicious visitors might dismiss a small exhibit on a patriotic topic as just another example of creeping “Harper History.” We were not prepared for the allegation that...