Winnipeg

Winnipeg
Country	Canada
State	Manitoba
Adopted	October 1, 1975
Designed by	Robert Watt
Proportions	1:2

The flag of Winnipeg, Canada, is a blue and yellow bicolor, divided diagonally by a white stripe. On the center is the city's coat of arms on a white circle.

Symbolism

The blue in the upper shield and the field of the flag represents the clear blue prairie skies. The golden yellow in the field of the flag represents agriculture, especially wheat farming, the original basis of Winnipeg’s economy. Although official colours have never been adopted by the city, blue and yellow were adopted as the official colours of the Winnipeg Centennial held in 1973. They may have influenced the design of the city’s flag two years later. The thirteen stars represent the thirteen former municipal governments which amalgamated on 27 July 1971 to create the “Unicity” of metropolitan Winnipeg: Transcona, St. Boniface, St. Vital, West Kildonan, East Kildonan, Tuxedo, Old Kildonan, North Kildonan, Fort Garry, Charleswood, St. James, Old City of Winnipeg, and Winnipeg. The prairie crocus (Anemone [or Pulsatilla] patens) is Manitoba’s provincial flower, and symbolizes Winnipeg as a prairie city and the provincial capital. It was adopted in 1906 by the Manitoba Legislature after winning an informal vote in the province’s schools. The stone structure depicted over the shield is a gatehouse, the remaining portion of Fort Garry, the original Hudson’s Bay Company trading post established at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in what is now downtown Winnipeg in 1822. Winnipeg’s motto, Unum Cum Virtute Multorum (Latin for “one with the strength of many”) has two meanings. It indicates that peoples of all races form the city and it recalls how modern Winnipeg was created by the amalgamation of thirteen municipalities.