Photo: Wikipedia Commons Amid a ‘shower of puns and derision’, following the 1958/centennial flag debacle, the government of BC was eager to resolve the debate quickly:
“A good way out of this embarrassing state of affairs would be to remove the element of choice by discovering that the province already had a flag. Having been made aware of the armorial banner by William MacAdam (BC’s Agent General in London, who pointed out the use of the armorial banner by some of his predecessors), provincial authorities arranged for the College of Arms to produce an official drawing of it, and for a flag itself to be manufactured in England.
This accomplished, on June 17, 1960 Premier Bennett was able to return from a three-week business trip to London with a flag he had supposedly just discovered at the College of Arms. The success of this minor subterfuge was followed swiftly by an order-in-council which, on June 27, 1960, converted the province’s armorial banner into its provincial flag.
The resulting flag is very effective when presented in the official 3:5 ratio. Unfortunately, the 1:2 ratio, most often seen outside the province, so greatly elongates the flag that, as one observer put it, the sun begins to look like a banana with rays.”
– Alistair B. Fraser