Newfoundland Gay Flag

Overview

The white ground of the Newfoundland and Labrador flag replaced by six horizontal rainbow stripes, with the blue triangles at the hoist, the red triangles in the fly and the gold arrow between them drawn over the top. The flag's geometry is unchanged; the rainbow shows only where the original is white. Greg Gomes published it in the Canadian provincial series and marked it as his own design. ^[1] No physical example has been documented.

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ

National Context

Canada; Newfoundland

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 Newfoundland and Labrador. 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

Beothuk — traditional inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland (Indigenous name: Beothuk, "the people" or "true people"). At European contact in the 16th century the Beothuk may have numbered 500 to 1,500. Their population fell through violent conflict with settlers, loss of access to territory and resources, and disease. Mi'kmaq and Innu oral tradition holds that Beothuk descendants live on in other Indigenous communities, and denies that the Beothuk are extinct. ^[4]

Innu — Nitassinan, the boreal territory of the Labrador Peninsula (Indigenous name: Nitassinan). Innu traditional territory is the boreal Labrador Peninsula, known as Nitassinan. Contemporary communities are largely sedentary, a product of government policies of forced relocation. ^[5]

Labrador Inuit (Labradormiut) — Nunatsiavut, self-governing since 2005 (Indigenous name: Nunatsiavut, "our beautiful land"). Nunatsiavut covers 72,520 km² of land and 44,030 km² of sea in northern Labrador. The Nunatsiavut Government was created on 1 December 2005, making the Labradormiut the first Inuit in Canada to achieve self-government; about 2,500 of roughly 6,500 beneficiaries live in Rigolet, Postville, Makkovik, Hopedale and Nain. ^[6]

Colonial / settler context

The province the flag names holds three distinct Indigenous histories. The Beothuk were the traditional inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland; their numbers collapsed after contact through conflict with settlers, loss of territory and disease, and while the Beothuk are often called extinct, Mi'kmaq and Innu oral tradition holds that their descendants live on in other Indigenous communities. ^[4] The Innu homeland, Nitassinan, covers the boreal Labrador Peninsula. ^[5] The Labrador Inuit created the Nunatsiavut Government on 1 December 2005, the first Inuit self-government in Canada, over 72,520 km² of land and 44,030 km² of sea. ^[6] Mi'kmaq communities are also present in Newfoundland. ^[7] The province has officially been Newfoundland and Labrador since 6 December 2001, when the Newfoundland and Labrador Act came into force with the Constitution Amendment, 2001; the Gay Journey page, published under the older name, calls it Newfoundland. ^[8] No source places Gomes in the province or records consultation with the Innu, the Inuit or the Mi'kmaq. ^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

Indigenous engagement

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

The flag represents Newfoundland and Labrador. 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 Newfoundland and Labrador 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, Manitoba Gay Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick 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 Newfoundland and Labrador 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

Newfoundland Gay Flag

Colors & Symbolism

No published statement of meaning has been located. The design's method is visible in the artwork: the provincial flag's coloured ground carries the rainbow while its charges are left in place.

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

Placement: the six stripes are visible only where the provincial flag is white. The blue, red and gold figures keep their own colours. 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

1:2 · apparent

Ratio Notes

Measured from the recovered artwork, 360 by 181 pixels and 7,011 bytes, the size the page lists. That is the 1:2 of the provincial flag. Published as apparent: measured from a served thumbnail, not from a specification.

Stripe Count

6

Layout

provincial_flag_variant

Center Symbol

Blue triangles at the hoist, red triangles and gold arrow in the fly

Read from the recovered artwork, which is 360 by 181 pixels and 7,011 bytes, the size the page lists. ^[1] The apparent proportion is 1:2, the proportion of the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial flag. Published as apparent. It is measured from the image rather than published anywhere, and the image is a thumbnail the page served rather than a specification.

No published proportion or construction sheet has been located.

The Newfoundland and Labrador flag with its white ground replaced by six horizontal rainbow stripes. The blue triangles at the hoist, the red triangles in the fly and the gold arrow between them are drawn over the rainbow, so the flag's geometry is unchanged and the stripes show through the white areas of the original.

Source flag and visual comparison

Source flag

Flag of Newfoundland and Labrador

Jurisdiction

Newfoundland and Labrador

Relationship

source flag with fields replaced by rainbow stripes

Elements retained

the blue triangles at the hoist, the red triangles in the fly and the gold arrow, all in position and colour

Elements altered

the white ground, replaced by the six-stripe rainbow

Christopher Pratt's 1980 design is a set of blue, red and gold figures on white. Gomes replaced the white and left the figures.

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

unknown

No physical use has been documented. ^[1]

Image Archive

Source Flag and Visual Comparison

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

as published by Gay Journey

• Newfoundland gay flag as published by Greg Gomes on the Gay Journey provincial page. · 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 Newfoundland and Labrador (Newfoundland and Labrador), the source flag for this design. Christopher Pratt's 1980 design is a set of blue, red and gold figures on white. Gomes replaced the white and left the figures. Relationship: source flag with fields replaced by rainbow stripes. Retained: the blue triangles at the hoist, the red triangles in the fly and the gold arrow, all in position and colour. Altered: the white ground, replaced by the six-stripe rainbow. · Credit: Christopher Pratt (design); SVG by 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.