Category Archives: Canada

Murdoch Mysteries

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I was pleased to note a historically accurate Canadian red ensign flag in Season 11, Episode 16 of the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries, in contrast to an earlier appearance. The plot of this episode (“Game of Kings”) revolves around an international chess tournament taking place in Toronto in 1905. The players’ nationalities are represented by little tabletop flags. 

Constable George Crabtree has gone undercover as a Canadian entrant. His flag shows the original four-provinces shield devised for the Dominion of Canada in 1868, featuring the arms of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. It is true that Canada had nine provinces by 1905 (Alberta and Saskatchewan had been admitted on September 1 of that year, and Crabtree makes a reference to this in Episode 13 when, thinking he’s dying, exclaims “I’ll never see Egypt or any of those new provinces we have now!”). A nine-quartered shield for Canada was devised in the wake of this, but the original shield was still in widespread use until 1921. 

An American competitor is represented by a US flag with 45 stars on the canton (count them!), for the number of states in the union at the time – Utah having been admitted in 1896. Oklahoma (1908), Arizona (1912) and New Mexico (1912) would soon raise the total to 48.

Poland did not exist as an independent country in 1905, but a Polish player has entered the tournament and is represented by the flag of the Polish National Government 1863-64, which had been proclaimed following the January Uprising (although the bottom stripe, according to Wikipedia, should be blue).

Wikipedia.

The coat of arms is for “a proposed Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth which never came into being. It consists of the Polish White Eagle, the Lithuanian Pahonia and the Ruthenian Archangel Michael.”

Wikipedia.

Other Polish references in this episode include the Szczerbiec (the traditional Polish coronation sword) and the Husaria (Polish knights who wore decorative wings while mounted). 

Kitchener, Ontario

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From The Waterloo Region Record (hat tip: Bruce Patterson), notice of an event from the same era that brought us Liberty Cabbage (i.e. sauerkraut) or prompted the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to switch its liturgical language from German to English.

KITCHENER — No drums rolled. All who waited outside city hall stayed silent, digesting the news. Berlin had picked a new city name. Few turned out to vote and nobody cheered the result.

You know the winning name: Kitchener. Residents chose it 100 years ago today in 1916, in a second referendum after a bitter name-changing debate that exhausted everyone and made the city the butt of jokes across the nation.

So yes, there was little enthusiasm when it was over. More like a long, slow exhale. On Sept. 1, 1916, Berlin officially became Kitchener.

Residents voted narrowly to change Berlin’s name in the midst of the First World War to prove loyalty and stem the backlash against a city with deep German roots.

Canadian soldiers were battling Germany, dying amid distant thunder on the Western Front in Europe. Canada, consumed by anti-German sentiment, eyed Berlin darkly, uneasy about buying goods stamped Made in Berlin, suspicious of its young men who were reluctant to enlist….

It’s a crazy story. When Berlin voted narrowly in May 1916 to change its name, it had no new name in mind. Kitchener wasn’t even in the running.

The city made itself a national laughingstock when a civic committee produced a bizarre shortlist: Huronto. Bercana (a mixture of Berlin and Canada). Dunard. Hydro City. Renoma (it means famous in Esperanto, an artificial language no country actually speaks). Agnoleo (an obscure Italian boy’s name).

Then it got crazier.

On June 5, 1916, British war leader Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener was killed when his battleship hit a German mine and sank off Scotland. His death stunned the empire, and his name was thrown onto a revised shortlist that was only slightly less odd. The final choices: Kitchener. Brock. Adanac (Canada spelled backwards). Benton. Corona. Keowana.

Kitchener barely won, chosen by 346 people. 

Click on the link to see the official ballot, which surprisingly was printed in both English and German (in Fraktur, naturlich). 

The End of the War in the Pacific

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August 15, 1945 was V-J Day, when Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies; September 2 marked the formal end of the war, when the Japanese signed the instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Something I did not know: Canada was a signatory to this instrument – and its representative signed in the wrong place! Col. Lawrence Cosgrave, a half-blind veteran of the First World War, put his signature on the line meant for the representative of the Provisional Government of the French Republic. This entailed some improvised editing, which you can see on an illustration accompanying a recent CBC article by Murray Brewster. 

That Canadians generally don’t know about this story, as inconsequential or even embarrassing as it is, is understood by historian Tim Cook to be emblematic of Canada’s “blind spot” about its role in the Second World War. According to Cook:

Following the First World War, Canadians built monuments from coast to coast. Canadian soldiers who served in that war — Cosgrave among them — wrote sometimes eloquent and moving accounts of their experiences under fire.

That didn’t happen in Canada following the Japanese and German surrenders in 1945, said Cook.

“We didn’t write the same history books. We didn’t produce films or television series,” he said. “We allowed the Americans and the British and even the Germans to write about the war and to present it on film.”

Read the whole thing to find out why.

Murdoch Mysteries

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The Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries (2009-present) is set in Toronto, starting in the 1890s. It’s a lot of fun; we’re currently up to season seven in our binge-watching. The characters are compelling, the plots not too convoluted, the art direction appealing, and the “future foreshadowing” (references to Area 51, the CN Tower, or Twitter, for instance) most amusing. I especially like hearing place names that I remember from my southern Ontario youth, like “Coboconk,” “Peterborough,” or “Grafton,” or seeing buildings like Victoria Hall, Parkwood Estate, or Boulden House (at Trinity College School) in various scenes. 

Through season six, the only flag on display in the show has been the Royal Union Flag, a.k.a. the Union Jack. 

To my puzzlement, these flags are often shown flying upside-down. But I reckon this subtly erroneous usage has always been a problem with this flag and the producers are in fact being historically accurate! 

Although I do wonder whether the Canadian Red Ensign wouldn’t have been flown more in the 1890s. A red flag with the Union Jack in the canton is at heart a naval ensign; throughout the British Empire it was often differenced with something in the fly, and some of these local variants achieved widespread use indeed, far beyond identifying ships. Canada’s flag was one such. It dates from the 1870s, was promoted for government buildings in 1891 by Governor-General Lord Stanley, and became Canada’s “civil ensign” in 1892. So you would think it would appear more than it has in the show. However, as far as I can tell, its first appearance is in season seven, episode one (set in 1901 as the portrait of Queen Victoria is being taken down in Station House Four, and Inspector Brackenreid proclaims “God save the King,” i.e. Victoria’s successor Edward VII).

The trouble with the Canadian red ensign is that the local signifier was the Canadian coat of arms. This means that one must watch for anachronisms, as Canada’s coat of arms itself changed as more provinces were accepted into Confederation. In 1901 there were seven provinces, although the original four-provinces shield also remained in common use. Flourishes like wreaths, crowns, and beavers could also be added at the manufacturer’s whim. But no one would have flown a red ensign with the coat of arms that was granted in 1921, or the version that was prescribed after 1957 (with red leaves, as in the image). 

This anachronism is especially glaring in season six, episode twelve, in which Julia Ogden is on trial for killing her husband. The Canadian coat of arms on display on the wall behind the judge was drawn by Allan Beddoe and dates from 1957. It’s far more likely that the arms on display in a courtroom in 1900 would be the royal arms of the United Kingdom. (And I wonder whether flags would actually be displayed in this context – it seems an American custom.) 

Royal arms. Wikipedia.

Royal arms in Osgoode Hall, Toronto. Wikipedia.

People just don’t know heraldry anymore. 

The Avro Arrow

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From BBC Future (hat tip: David Winter):

The record-breaking jet which still haunts a country
 
A decade after the end of World War Two, Canada built a jet which pushed technology to its limits. But its demise showed why smaller nations found it difficult to compete in the Jet Age.

In the early years of the Cold War, Canada decided to design and build the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world.

Canada is well known for its rugged bush planes, capable of rough landings and hair-raising take-offs in the wilderness. From the late 1930s, the North American country had also started to manufacture British-designed planes for the Allied war effort. Many of these planes were iconic wartime designs like the Hawker Hurricane fighter and Avro Lancaster bomber.

Ambitious Canadian politicians and engineers weren’t satisfied with this. They decided to forge a world-leading aircraft manufacturing industry out of the factories and skilled workforce built up during the war. Tired of manufacturing aircraft designed by others, this new generation of Canadian leaders were determined to produce Canadian designs. Avro Aircraft, the Canadian airplane maker created after the war, was the company that would deliver their dream.

Freed from the set ways-of-thinking of Avro’s more established rivals, the firm’s engineers were able to work on revolutionary jet fighters, commercial airliners, flying saucers and even a space plane. They placed Canada at the technological cutting edge of the new Jet Age.

In so doing, these engineers challenged notions of what small countries like Canada could achieve in the hi-tech industries of the day, even if convincing politicians to stump up the cash for them was an altogether trickier business.

Then came the Arrow. On 4 October 1957, 14,000 people watched a large hangar on the outskirts of Toronto open to reveal a beautiful, large, white, delta-wing aircraft. The plane was the Avro Arrow interceptor. A third longer and broader than today’s Eurofighter Typhoon, the Arrow could fly close to Mach 2.0 (1,500 mph, or the maximum speed of Concorde), and had the potential to fly even faster. It was Canada’s Can$250m (US$1,58bn today) bid to become an aviation superpower.

The project was genuinely ground-breaking. Avro’s engineers had been allowed to build a record-breaker without compromise. But Canadians would soon discover that the supersonic age had made aviation projects so expensive that only a handful of countries could carry them out – and Canada, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them.

Read the whole thing. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker canceled the Arrow in 1959 for genuine reasons of cost, but it was a huge blow to national pride, and the ordered destruction of everything to do with the project (for reasons of security) seemed an added insult. Fifteen thousand people lost their jobs as a result, although NASA did cherry-pick 33 Canadian engineers and put them to good use. They might not have been as important as Von Braun’s German team, or even the Hidden Figures ladies, but they made some genuine contributions to the moon shot, including the Lunar Orbiter Rendezvous concept, the design of the Lunar Module, and the design of the heat shield to protect the Command Module upon its return to Earth (see this CTV News article for more). 

As it happens we saw an episode of the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries this week. Set in Toronto in the 1890s, the episode (entitled “Murdoch Air“) featured the fictional inventor James Pendrick and his prototype heavier-than-air aircraft, which he called Pendrick Arrow, a clear reference to the Avro Arrow. It too gets deliberately destroyed. 

Canadian Money

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In Canada, prior to the “Scenes of Canada” series of currency notes, which debuted in 1969, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appeared on all bills in circulation, as she still appears on the obverse of all the coins in circulation. As Canada’s head of state and the guarantor of the entire thing, this is just and fitting. However, Betty Windsor is also the head of a number of other states, doesn’t even live in Canada, and is a living symbol of unearned privilege and imperial conquest, etc. So the Scenes of Canada series, in accord with the mood in the 1960s, tried to insert some uniquely Canadian Content: the Queen remained on the $1, $2, and $20 bills, but former Prime Ministers appeared on the others: Laurier on the $5, Macdonald on the $10, King on the $50, and Borden on the $100. These were judged to be the most influential heads of government to date, and they were balanced with two from each of the major political parties (and represent a 3:1 English to French ratio, reflective of the country’s demographics). They did not represent sovereignty as such, but they were important people in Canadian history who exercised actual political power. This pattern remained with the Birds of Canada series, the Canadian Journey series, and the current Frontier series.

Politicians, however, don’t get the respect that they used to, and balance between political parties is not the sort of diversity that we cherish anymore. Sir John A. Macdonald, father of Confederation and first Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada, was also responsible for Chinese exclusion, for the Indian residential school system, and for the execution of Louis Riel. Plus, he was a raging alcoholic. So his statue has been removed from in front of the Victoria, B.C., city hall, the Canadian Historical Association has removed his name from one of the prizes it awards, and as of 2018 his image has been replaced on the $10 note with one Viola Desmond, Canada’s equivalent of Rosa Parks.* So it appears that people on currency notes no longer need any connection to governance at all – in fact, “resisters” of the established order now get monetary memorialization. I’m not saying this is bad necessarily, but the advantage of putting the sovereign on the notes, or important Prime Ministers, is that the choice is obvious – there can be little debate about who should go on, and focusing on the top of the pyramid represents, in its way, everyone below. Once one expands the category to include important Canadians of all stripes, one opens a can of worms. Who gets to go on?!** Generally such memorialization is what postage stamps are for, since there is a potentially limitless number of designs for that particular medium. (Although I wonder, with the deprecation of physical cash, will currency notes soon become like stamps, with multiple designs in circulation at any one time, and new designs introduced every year? Think of how much seignorage the government could make as people collect them! Alternately, maybe we should take the attitude towards human portraits on bills that we take towards human sports mascots – best to avoid them entirely, as does the European Union.)

But since they’ve taken Sir John A. off the ten, they now feel they have to take Laurier off the five. Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz has recently stated that:

the bank will launch public consultations for the design of the polymer note, similar to the ones “that led to the selection of Viola Desmond for the $10 note,” he said. “This time we will be asking all Canadians to nominate any historic Canadian — someone who is truly banknote-able.” 

A friend of mine suggests that Louis Riel should go on. Personally I think that this would be akin to putting Robert E. Lee on an American note but I guess not all armed rebellions against state authority are equal….

At this point it does not appear that they’ve set up a website asking for suggestions. 

UPDATE: From the National Post: “Would Gord Downie even want Gord Downie on the $5 bill?” (Gord Downie being the lead singer of the Canadian rock act The Tragically Hip, who died of glioblastoma in 2017.)

* In 1946, Desmond, a Nova Scotian of African descent, refused to leave a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, N.S. (It should be noted that the racial segregation was theatre policy, not provincial law.) She was arrested and convicted of tax evasion, since the tax on the floor seats was one cent more than the tax on the balcony seats. She received a posthumous pardon in 2010. 

The United States is contemplating something similar. I have heard for several years now that President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), frontiersman and champion of the common man, but also slaveholder and remover of the Cherokee, is to be removed on the front of the $20 bill, with Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave and conductor of the Underground Railroad, put in his place. But this move seems to have put on hold as a result of the change in administration in 2017. 

** I recall that, during the debate about changing the $10 bill, that they wanted to put a Canadian woman it, not realizing that the Queen is a Canadian woman. It reminded me of Mark Steyn’s response to the claim that Adrienne Clarkson was the “first immigrant Governor General”: “Ok, then, who was Viscount Monck – some hardscrabble lobster fisherman who came west and made it big on the street of dreams in Ottawa?”

Revanche!

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Here is an amusing story that serves as a riposte to Monsieur Eaton and his treatment of a youthful Roch Carrier (hat tip: David Winter):

Tania Levesque.

Pastry Chef Disappoints Toronto Maple Leafs Fan with Maple Leaf Foods Cake

Canadians from coast-to-coast are getting a giggle today out of what might be the funniest cake decorating fail since someone mistook graduation “cap” for actual “cat.”

The tale begins in Mascouche, Quebec, where the parents of a young sports fan named Jacob started planning his eighth birthday party.

Knowing that Jacob loves nothing more than hockey — and, in particular, the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs — his parents planned a party at a Montreal arena and put in an order in for a custom cake bearing the Maple Leafs logo.

The boy’s stepmother, Tania Levesque, posted a photo of the finished product on Facebook Saturday evening.

“So Jacob was asking for a Toronto Maple Leafs cake for his birthday. The Pastry Chef of course was on google to find the logo but didn’t write… from Toronto,” wrote Levesque in her post, which has since been shared nearly 1,500 times.

“So this party is sponsored by the cold meats.”

That’s right: The baker confused Maple Leafs —Toronto’s NHL team — with Maple Leaf — one of Canada’s largest packaged meat brands.

Jacob’s father picked up the cake while en route to his son’s birthday party this weekend, but didn’t get a chance to look inside the box until he got there, according to CBC Montreal.

While shocked and confused by what they saw on the cake, the boy’s parents laughed off the silly mistake and served it anyway.

When asked what happened, Levesque told the CBC that the unnamed bakery she went to didn’t have a Toronto Maple Leafs stencil on hand. She suggested they simply Google the logo and put it on Jacob’s cake.

Something seems to have been lost in translation along the way, but kids attending the party ate the cold cut-themed cake all the same —  except for Jacob, who Levesque said refused to try it.

Some might say, as a Maple Leafs fan in Quebec, that the boy had it coming.

Apparently Maple Leaf meats have furnished Jacob with tickets to see the hockey team. 

Cake Wrecks is an entire website devoted to “professional cakes going horribly wrong.” Here is the “cake that started it all“:

Cake Wrecks.

Toronto Flaggery

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I enjoyed a great weekend in Toronto, where I participated in the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada’s Study Day with a talk on symbols of Newfoundland (drawn in part from previous posts on this blog). It was nice of my parents to come in from Port Hope for the day (and for my cousins to put me up). 

Photo: Robert Walsh.

In keeping with one of the themes of this blog, I took some photographs of flags that I saw.

This is the interior of the “Great Hall” of Union Station, which features a display of all the provincial flags of Canada.

Flag of Toronto, flying on University Avenue. This flag dates from 1974 and was the flag of the old City of Toronto proper, i.e. one of the constituent cities of Metropolitan Toronto, which included East York, North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough, and York. With the abolition of these cities in 1998, the flag of the one part became the flag of all the parts, since the 1999 grant of arms to the amalgamated City of Toronto did not include a flag. The design references the distinctive architecture of Toronto City Hall.

Also on University Avenue, the flag of the University Club of Toronto, which was granted in 2006. 

Flying from the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park, the flags of Ontario, Canada, and Legislative Assembly, which consists of the arms of Ontario with crossed maces and an embattled bordure. This was granted back in 1992 and was somewhat controversial, if I recall correctly, since generally legislatures get badges, not full coats of arms. Plus, it seems that the actual flag granted to the Ontario Legislature was supposed to be square, not rectangular.

Enjoyed a nice dinner at the Royal Canadian Military Institute, where the flags of Canada’s three armed service commands are prominently displayed in the lobby.

Also on display at RCMI, a World War I era Canadian red ensign, complete with nine-quartered coat of arms. 

I walked by a renovated Varsity Stadium, the main sports field of the University of Toronto. Flying on Bloor Street were two U. of T. flags, one featuring the university’s coat of arms with a reversed background (nice effect!), and another athletic flag featuring a T and a maple leaf. 

Finally, a flag that I did not know about. In front of the Legislative Building we encountered a protest in favour of Azad Kashmir, with numerous examples of its flag being displayed.

L’Anse aux Meadows

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Flags of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and the United Nations, at the L’Anse aux Meadows visitors’ centre. 

As promised, a post about L’Anse aux Meadows, an archaeological site of some importance, located at the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland and maintained as a National Heritage Site by Parks Canada. The site, discovered in the 1960s, offers indisputable proof that Scandinavians settled in the New World around the year 1000, almost five hundred years before Columbus landed in the Bahamas; for this reason it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is also quite popular and provides a lot of the branding for local tourism (the Viking Trail, the Viking Lodge, the Great Viking Feast, etc.)

Several Icelandic sagas describe voyages made by the Norse from their settlements in Greenland to mainland North America in search of needed supplies, chiefly timber. The explorers visited places they named “Helluland,” “Markland,” and “Vinland” – and since the nineteenth century archaeologists have tried to identify them. It is reckoned that “Helluland” is Baffin Island, and “Markland” somewhere on the coast of Labrador. Vinland was more elusive: the sagas describe it as a place where wild grapes grew, which could be on the southern shore of of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or south of that in New England. 

Vínland, with an acute accent over the “i”, means “wineland,” which would be a natural name for a place with wild grapes. The Norwegian husband-and-wife team of Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad, however, hypothesized that it was simply “Vinland,” without the accent, which would mean “pastureland,” with northern Newfoundland being a promising site. Visiting L’Anse aux Meadows in 1960, he was shown a series of low turf walls that the locals referred to as “the Indian mounds.” Excavations throughout the 1960s showed that these were the remains of buildings similar to those found in Iceland and Greenland and dating from around AD 1000. What really established the site as Norse, however, were such discoveries as a spindle whorl used for weaving, a stone with a depression in the middle (interpreted either as a lamp or a pivot stone for a door), a bronze fastening pin, and the remains of a forge that had produced iron slag, and the remains of iron rivets used for boat repair. No Natives at this time used such technology. 

Remains of the Viking buildings.

As it turns out, L’Anse aux Meadows is probably not Vinland, which really ought to have a long “i” and mean “Wineland,” as the sagas suggest. Birgitta Linderoth Wallace points out, in Westward Vikings, that the word “vin” as “pasture” had fallen out of use by 1000. She suggests that Vinland was likely somewhere in northern New Brunswick, and that L’Anse aux Meadows is Straumfjord (“Current Ford”) mentioned in Erik the Red’s Saga, a sort of base camp that served as a gateway to Vinland and a place to gather goods before shipping them back to Greenland. The inhabitants at the site did not practice agriculture, but they could spend the winter there if need be, in the substantial turf buildings they had constructed.

Model of the site.

Will we ever discover where in “Vinland” the Norse actually came ashore? Wallace claims that it’s unlikely. Any temporary camps the Norse may have set up in New Brunswick would have left little evidence behind, or at least such evidence would be indistinguishable from sites of Native provenance. Even items of Viking origin would not be proof of an actual encampment, but simply of trade (such items can travel a long way from their point of origin, through many intermediaries). 

Parks Canada reconstruction of Norse buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows.

L’Anse aux Meadows was not occupied for very long, perhaps less than ten years in total (at least, if you don’t subscribe to the most recent scholarship on the place). Our guide claimed that the Ingstads, and subsequent archaeologists, have actually found very little at the site, evidence that it was deliberately abandoned (if it were suddenly and hastily abandoned, the occupants would have left a lot more stuff, since they wouldn’t have had time to clean it up). He also claimed that the abandonment was as a result of the conversion of the Norse to Christianity, which also took place around the year 1000. With conversion, trade with Europe became much easier, obviating the need to sail to Vinland, although Wallace suggests, from evidence uncovered in Greenland, that the Vinland explorers were already Christian. Either way, it was likely just as easy to sail to Norway as it was to Newfoundland, where more interesting goods could be acquired, and where there was a bigger market for Greenland’s walrus ivory. And in any event, Wallace estimates that maintaining the site was too expensive in terms of manpower – it would have required some 5% of the adult male population of Greenland, which was simply too much.

Reconstructed forge, L’Anse aux Meadows.

It is certainly worth a visit if you ever get there. The Visitors’ Centre is excellent, with thorough and informative exhibits, and a great gift shop. The reconstructed buildings, complete with re-enactors, are also a lot of fun. 

But part of me wonders whether it isn’t somewhat ethnocentric to make such a big deal about L’Anse aux Meadows. The place is significant, but far more significant is Port au Choix, an archaeological site which we visited as we drove up the northern peninsula. It features six thousand years of continuous occupation by successive Native peoples, including the Maritime Archaic people, the Dorset people, the Groswater people and the Beothuks, all of whom fished and hunted seals. This place deserves to be better known.

The trouble is that it would be politically very difficult to have re-enactors playing Indians. Even the diorama, you’ll notice, does not feature three-dimensional figures.

Colonial Seals of Canada

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Warning: this post is technical and pedantic.

Two years ago I wrote a post about the evolution of Canada’s coat of arms. Prior to Confederation in 1867, though, it seems that no colony regularly used a coat of arms. Instead, colonies represented themselves with emblematic seals, on the rare occasions when they needed to. Few people know about these seals nowadays; it seems that joining Confederation and adopting a coat of arms went hand-in-hand.

One place where you can see some colonial-era seals is in the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, near the entrance to the House of Commons. I took these pictures in 2006, but I only noticed just now that they aren’t exactly parallel to each other. 

Upper Canada (i.e. Ontario).

Lower Canada (i.e. Quebec).

New Brunswick.

Nova Scotia.

You will notice that the seals of both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have renditions of the royal arms hanging over an emblematic scene, a feature that does not exist in the seals of Upper and Lower Canada. This wasn’t always the case, however: Conrad Swan’s Symbols of Sovereignty (1977) illustrates colonial-era seals for both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that are simply the emblematic scenes. 

“Obverse (proof impression) and reverse of the 1817 Great Seal Deputed of New Brunswick of George III.” From Swan, Symbols of Sovereignty, 150.

“Great Seal Deputed of Nova Scotia of George III, in use from 1818.” From Swan, Symbols of Sovereignty, 128.

Or rather, what we have here are double-sided seals, with the emblematic scene on one side, and the royal arms on the other. There was a time when official instruments featured seals hanging by ribbons from the bottom of the document, in which case it was possible for a different design to be impressed on either side of the wax. Letters Patent originating from the College of Arms in London are still done this way, as is the honorary grant of arms to the Virginia Senate:

What seems to have happened, over the course of the early nineteenth century, is that dependent seals went out of fashion, and seals impressed directly into the document became more common. Thus, the royal arms had to migrate from one side of the seal to the other, so that both the arms and the scene could appear on the same side. This shift occurred in Upper and Lower Canada as well:

“Proof impression of the Great Seal Deputed of Upper Canada of Victoria.” From Swan, Symbols of Sovereignty, 167.

“Proof impression of the Great Seal Deputed of Lower Canada of William IV, 1832.” From Swan, Symbols of Sovereignty, 111.

Note the dates here: the first is from the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), and the second from the reign of King William IV (1830-37), while the double-sided ones are all from the reign of George III (1760-1820). 

Actually, the seal of Upper Canada for Victoria could not have seen much use, because in 1841 Upper and Lower Canada were united to form the United Province of Canada (subdivided into “Canada West” and “Canada East,” but still one polity). The seal of the United Province of Canada showed both seals of Upper and Lower Canada together, under the royal arms, as had become the custom by that time. 

A. & P. Vachon Collection, Canadian Museum of History.

So I would say that the display in the House of Commons could have been done slightly better. It should either show four emblematic scenes alone, for Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia – or it should show only three seals with the royal arms over the emblematic scene: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and United Canada, as representing the political situation on the eve of Confederation. (People forget that only three colonies came together in 1867, because immediately Canada was redivided into Ontario and Quebec.)

But as I say, each of these now-provinces has a coat of arms, and that’s what people know. These coats of arms are what got engraved into the provincial seals. From Wikipedia, here is Ontario’s:

The royal arms appear in the centre, while Ontario’s arms are at the base, both of them within a glorious Victorian-Gothic frame. 

Apparently this was a template: other provinces have the same design. Quebec certainly did:

From Swan, Symbols of Sovereignty, 114.

Swan designates this as the “Present Great Seal of Quebec” but the design did not last very long after his book was published in 1977. The previous year, you see, the Parti Québécois had taken power in Quebec, and proceeded to refashion it in their image. From Wikipedia, here is the real present seal of Quebec, which dates from 1979:

So they jettisoned both the royal arms and their provincial arms, which features references to Britain and Canada as well as France. (Frankly, I’m surprised that they haven’t changed this as well.) 

Wikipedia. 

Instead, the current seal just features a simple fleur de lys, done in the standardized Quebec style (and a ring of fleur de lys around the exterior, like the hem of the old Quebec Nordiques sweaters). You’ll also note an acute accent over the first “e” in Quebec, even though accents are optional on capital letters – and no reference at all to Quebec being a “province.”

Vive le Québec libre!