Museum in Argyle dedicated entirely to flags

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2018 (2784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ARGYLE — If you’re passing Government House on Kennedy Street in Winnipeg and wonder whether to knock to see if Manitoba Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon is in, don’t bother.

Just look up. If the navy-blue flag is flying, Filmon is home in her third-floor residence. If not, she’s not.

That’s just one example of how flags hold meaning, says Shayne Campbell, president of the Settlers, Rails & Trails Museum in Argyle and proprietor of the second-largest flag collection in Canada.

That’s what intrigued Campbell and turned him into a flag collector, or vexillophile (from the Latin word vexillum, meaning flag or banner).

“Flags are a national symbol. How do you take 36 million people and say, ‘This one thing represents all of you?’”

The tiny hamlet of Argyle, 35 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, had some excitement last month when Campbell’s collection was supplemented by a donation of 267 historic flags. 

The donation was from Ralph Spence, a retired Anglican bishop in Hamilton, who has his own Wikipedia page devoted to his passion for flags. Spence, now in his 70s, is often asked to make speeches about flags and flag history, and has been an adviser to television shows and movies regarding accuracy in portraying flags.

The items arrived on Feb. 15 — National Flag Day, no less. They bring Campbell’s collection up to 1,300 flags, about a thousand back of the Canadian Museum of History.

“Usually, Shayne just gets a flag in the mail. To get 267 flags at one time, that was a pretty big deal,” Joan Grandmont, a volunteer at the Argyle museum, said.

“Some people collect thimbles, some people collect round oak tables,” said Grandmont, who is into antique furniture and knows something about round oak tables. “Shayne likes collecting flags.”

The flag collection has elevated the small, modest museum from local to regional status. That’s pretty good for a village of “85, including dogs and cats,” by the count of Carol Morgan, a museum board member.

Campbell, 39, has been collecting flags since he was 12.

The collection grew like a rolling snowball. He moved it to some outbuildings on his parents’ acreage and ran a private museum there. Three years ago, the community opened the Settlers museum in the basement of the Argyle Community Hall. Half the small museum is dedicated to flags, the other half to the area’s military history.

Campbell is still sorting through the donated flags and hasn’t even opened all the boxes yet. But two gems among the new additions are a well-worn Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897) and the blue flag that mounts on the hood of the lieutenant-governor’s limousine.

The expanded collection includes many college and religious-institution flags, as well as those for charitable organizations such as the Red Cross and United Way and for health services such as Manitoba Blue Cross. One of the flags donated by Spence is a musical treble clef to the start of O Canada.

The collection boasts corporate flags, too.

“You can see the North West Company flag flying at their headquarters on Main Street (in Winnipeg). It’s a green and white flag,” Campbell said. “I always have my eye in the sky. I’m always noticing flags.”

The military always rallies around a flag, and there are legions of flags representing the Canadian Forces. The museum has a red flag with the British red ensign in the top left corner, which Canadian soldiers carried into the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917.

The Settlers museum is also attentive to the Great Canadian Flag Debate, displaying many of the finalists in the contest for the nation’s flag design. (The Maple Leaf was inaugurated on Feb. 15, 1965.)

The Canadian flag’s symmetry is unique among national flags because the white box in the centre is exactly half the width of the flag. In other words, the two red bars beside, when combined, equal the white middle.

“We were the first to do that kind of symmetry,” Campbell said.

The Argyle-based collection contains commemorative flags, centennial flags, city and regional flags, labour union flags, sports team flags, sports event flags (Olympics and Pan American Games) — and a giant, 20-kilogram Canadian flag, donated by Husky Energy Inc., that is folded up in a large bag right now.

The Settlers museum is open the first Saturday of each month, from 1 to 4 p.m.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca