Manitoba Gay Flag

Overview

The red field of the Manitoba flag replaced by six horizontal rainbow stripes, with the Union Jack kept in the canton and the provincial shield with its bison kept in the fly. Greg Gomes published it in the Canadian provincial series and marked it as his own design; the copy held here is the smaller of the two images his page used, 120 by 80 pixels, and the full-size file has not been retrieved. ^[1] No physical example has been documented.

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ

National Context

Canada; Manitoba

Creators

The Creator

Attribution notes

This flag is one of the thirteen Canadian provincial and territorial designs, and it carries the symbol Gomes placed before a flag name to mark a design as his own rather than one he catalogued. ^[1] His publication, that marking convention and his reuse terms are set out in the creator record below.

Origin

Digital Origin

Gay Flags of the World (gayflags.biz)

Origin Type

creation place unknown; published online

Physical Origin Status

Not documented.

Represents Manitoba. The design was not made there: it was published through a McKinney, Texas post-office address and the place it was drawn is not documented. ^[1]

Indigenous land context

Treaty 1, Treaty 2, Treaty 3 and Treaty 5 First Nations — treaty territories covering present-day Manitoba. Treaties 1 and 2, both concluded in 1871, and Treaty 5, signed in 1875 and 1876 with Ojibwe peoples and the Swampy Cree of Lake Winnipeg, cover present-day Manitoba. ^[4][5] Treaty 3 was concluded in 1873 at the Lake of the Woods with the Saulteaux. ^[4] Treaties 1 and 2 are the only numbered treaties that do not state an ongoing right to hunt and fish in the treaty area, and their reserve allocation was fixed at 160 acres per family of five. ^[4]

Colonial / settler context

Manitoba is covered by Treaties 1 and 2 of 1871 and Treaty 5 of 1875 to 1876, with Treaty 3 concluded in 1873 at the Lake of the Woods. ^[4][5] Treaties 1 and 2 are the only numbered treaties that do not state a continuing right to hunt and fish in the treaty area, and their reserve allocation was the smallest, 160 acres per family of five; complaints about promises made in negotiation but absent from the written text led to an order-in-council in 1875 raising the annuity. ^[4] Manitoba was created in 1870 out of Rupert's Land, and Métis families in the province were dealt with through the scrip system rather than through treaty, and were excluded from most treaty reserve provisions. ^[6] The Union Jack Gomes kept in the canton is the imperial symbol carried on the provincial Red Ensign. No source places him in Manitoba or records consultation with any First Nation or Métis community there. ^[4][5][6]

Indigenous engagement

None documented. No source records Gomes consulting, or being asked by, any of the Nations or governments named here.

The flag represents Manitoba. Where it was made is not documented. The design was published through Gay Flags of the World (gayflags.biz), run from American Dimensions, PO Box 573, McKinney, Texas, which is a mailing address for the publisher and not evidence of where Gomes lived or worked. No source located places Gomes in Manitoba or identifies him as a resident or community member there. ^[1]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2002

Published online

Published online by 2002; the collection ran to 2011. No physical use documented.

Creation Bounds

Four different things are recorded here and they are not the same date. The copyright range on Gay Journey begins in 2002, and the site's flag section is in the Internet Archive from 28 October 2002, which bounds the collection rather than this design. ^[1] Collection-level publication is documented from outside the sites twice: Francisco Santos described GayJourney.COM on Flags of the World on 14 May 2003 as carrying "lots of rainbows: from Argentina to Wales, EU, UNO, US states, Canadian provinces and general gay flags," and Richard Knipel wrote again on 14 June 2004. Neither report lists or dates an individual flag. ^[3] Direct documentation of this design is later than either: the Internet Archive index holds a capture of this image file, taken on 11 December 2011. No source dates the design itself, and no flag in the collection carries a date of its own. The year given is the earliest year the collection is documented in publication.

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Rainbow Pride Flag

Sibling flags

Alberta Gay Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Anarcha-Queer Flag (rainbow variant), Argentina Gay Flag, Australia Gay Flag, Brazil Gay Flag

+ 44 more

British Columbia Gay Flag, Canadian Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Chile Gay Flag, Dominican Republic Gay Flag, Egypt Gay Flag, European Union Gay Flag, France Gay Flag, Gay Pride Flag of Pakistan, Heteroflexible Pride Flag, Heterosexual / Straight Pride Flag, Homoflexible Pride Flag, India Gay Flag, Italy Gay Flag, Japan Gay Flag, Jewish Gay Pride Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick Gay Flag, Newfoundland Gay Flag, Northwest Territories Gay Flag, Nova Scotia Gay Flag, Nunavut Gay Flag, Ontario Gay Flag, Palestinian Gay Pride Flag, Panama Gay Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Prince Edward Island Gay Flag, Quebec Gay Flag, Rainbow Flag with White Triangle (Sapporo), Rainbow Israel Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag (2014, Angela Getler), Russia Gay Flag, Saskatchewan Gay Flag, Social Justice Pride Flag, South African Gay Pride Flag, Switzerland Gay Flag, Tanzania Gay Flag, Texas Rainbow Flag, Turkish Gay Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation), Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown), Yukon Territory Gay Flag

Lineage confidence

high

Two visual sources, one of which the lineage graph can hold and one of which it cannot. The six-stripe Rainbow Pride Flag is a direct Pride-flag parent and is registered as one. The Flag of Manitoba is the second visual source, and it is recorded as a structured source-flag relationship in Design rather than as a graph node, because the graph accepts only Encycloflaggia entries and no Pride entry should be invented to create one. The relationship here is: source flag with fields replaced by rainbow stripes. Flags of the World describes the method this whole class of flag follows as "taking an existing flag and 'merging' it with the Rainbow Flag or various GLBT symbols to represent GLBT members of the group the existing flag represents." ^[3] The other Gomes flags are siblings by collection rather than by descent: one designer, one operation, four series published together under one set of terms. A shared designer is a collection relationship and not a substitute for parentage.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 4 records across 4 generations.

Ancestors -3

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestor

Rainbow Pride Flag

This record

Manitoba Gay Flag

Colors & Symbolism

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

No statement of meaning has been located. The page gives the flags names and nothing more. ^[1]

Placement: the six stripes fill the field behind the canton and the shield, both of which keep their own colours. Sampled from a 120 by 80 pixel thumbnail, so the values are coarser here than elsewhere in the series. These are working values sampled from the surviving artwork at the centre of each band, not published specifications; the collection-level note on the recurring Gomes rainbow values is carried in the creator record rather than repeated on each flag.

Design

Aspect Ratio

2:3 · apparent

Ratio Notes

Measured from the copy held here, a 120 by 80 pixel thumbnail of 2,462 bytes. That is a 2:3 proportion where the Manitoba flag is 1:2, and the page lists manitoba.gif at 7,613 bytes, so this is the smaller of the two images the page used and not the file behind the thumbnail link. The proportion is therefore a property of this thumbnail and is published as apparent.

Center Symbol

the shield of arms of Manitoba, placed in the fly half rather than at the centre

Additional Symbols

Union Jack in the canton, red St George's Cross on the white chief of the shield, brown bison on a green field, pale mound beneath the bison

The copy held here is a 120 by 80 pixel thumbnail of 2,462 bytes. The Gay Journey page lists manitoba.gif at 7,613 bytes, so this is the smaller of the two images the page used and not the file behind the thumbnail link. The larger file has not been retrieved. ^[1] Observed in the artwork: The rendering is 120 by 80 pixels, a 3:2 proportion, where the flag of Manitoba is 1:2. It is not documented whether this is deliberate or an artefact of the rendering. The Union Jack canton spans about 53 of 120 pixels across and about 26 of 80 pixels down, so it is shallower in relation to its width than the upper quarter it fills on the source flag. The image limits what can be established: At 120 by 80 pixels detail is not resolvable. The shield's charges read only as broad shapes: the cross, a brown quadruped silhouette and the pale mound beneath it. The Union Jack's diagonals are visible but its fimbriations and internal proportions cannot be checked, and the presence or absence of a shield outline, border or any further ornament cannot be established either way at this size. The design is described from the recovered artwork, not from any source that describes it.

No published proportion or construction sheet has been located. The full-size manitoba.gif the page lists at 7,613 bytes was sought and not retrieved; the copy held is the smaller of the two images the page used. ^[1]

Six horizontal stripes of equal depth fill the field: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet from the top, replacing the red field of the flag of Manitoba. A Union Jack fills the canton in the upper hoist, covering the red and orange stripes and part of the yellow. The shield of arms of Manitoba is retained in the fly half, roughly level with the middle of the flag, showing a white chief with a red St George's Cross above a green field on which a brown bison stands on a pale mound. The image is 120 by 80 pixels; the shield occupies about 20 by 26 pixels of that and the canton about 53 by 26 pixels.

Source flag and visual comparison

Source flag

Flag of Manitoba

Jurisdiction

Manitoba

Relationship

source flag with fields replaced by rainbow stripes

Elements retained

the Union Jack canton and the provincial shield of arms with its bison

Elements altered

the red field, replaced by the six-stripe rainbow

The Manitoba flag is a Red Ensign with the provincial shield in the fly. Gomes recoloured the ground and left the canton and the shield.

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

unknown

No physical use has been documented. ^[1]

Image Archive

Source Flag and Visual Comparison

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

thumbnail held; full-size artwork not retrieved

• Manitoba gay flag as published by Greg Gomes on the Gay Journey provincial page, in the smaller of the two images the page used. · Credit: Design by Greg Gomes, Gay Journey · Gay Journey, Provincial Gay Flags Of CanadaRights Gay Journey identified the marked designs as Gomes's property and asked that reuse be credited to him and linked back to gay_flags.htm. The credit and the link here are placed to those terms as published; the present rights and contact status have not been independently verified. ^[1]
• Flag of Manitoba (Manitoba), the source flag for this design. The Manitoba flag is a Red Ensign with the provincial shield in the fly. Gomes recoloured the ground and left the canton and the shield. Relationship: source flag with fields replaced by rainbow stripes. Retained: the Union Jack canton and the provincial shield of arms with its bison. Altered: the red field, replaced by the six-stripe rainbow. · Credit: Wikimedia Commons contributors · Wikimedia CommonsRights Public domain. Wikimedia Commons marks this file with an insignia restriction: it depicts a flag, coat of arms, seal or other official insignia whose use is restricted in many countries independently of copyright. Reproduced here as a comparison for the Gomes design, not as a representation of any government.