Without one Toronto MP’s behind-the-scenes skulduggery a half-century ago, Canadians might not be celebrating the 50th anniversary of their red maple leaf flag on Sunday.

Reid Scott maintains that he “rigged” the final vote to ensure the 15-person parliamentary flag committee recommended the single-leaf banner that has flown across Canada since Feb. 15, 1965. It was up against a three-leaf pennant favoured by prime minister Lester Pearson and a version of the red-leaf flag that included the Union Jack and fleur-de-lis and was supported by the opposition Conservatives.

“I admit it, I rigged the vote. I’d be a fool to deny it,” says Scott, the lone survivor from the committee that was struck in the fall of 1964 to end what had been a rancorous summer-long flag debate in the House of Commons.

“I don’t call it trickery, I call it legal manoeuvring,” says the 88-year-old who resides in a Pickering retirement community. “It’s quite legitimate. I didn’t commit any crime.”

Scott’s is a colourful tale of backroom politics difficult to prove or disprove, because all of the flag committee meetings were held in private and he is the last direct witness. But something clearly happened behind the closed doors of a Senate committee room, or in clandestine gatherings elsewhere, to hoodwink the Conservatives into voting for a flag they didn’t support.

During the election of 1963, Pearson promised a distinctive flag that would unify Canada and replace the Red Ensign that was never given formal sanction by Parliament. Pearson was elected with a minority Liberal government and on June 15, 1964, asked the House of Commons to establish as Canada’s flag an emblem of three red maple leaves on a single stem on a white background between two blue bars, a design commonly referred to as the Pearson Pennant.

That began what Scott recalls as “one of the longest, most bitter debates in the entire history of the Canadian Parliament. It was a loony bin. The longer it went, the crazier everybody got, especially during the night sittings when they’d had a few drinks. You wouldn’t believe the cursing and swearing.”

Conservative party leader John Diefenbaker dug in, determined to defeat Pearson on the flag. The Tory filibuster went into September when, finally, Parliament struck a multi-party committee to develop a flag. Diefenbaker, however, said any recommendation it made had to be virtually unanimous to carry any weight in the Commons.

“They gave us six weeks to do what the country couldn’t do in 97 years,” says Scott, the member for Toronto Danforth and the lone NDPer in the group.

The committee was made up of seven Liberals, five Conservatives, and a member each from the Social Credit, Ralliement des Créditistes and New Democratic parties.

Scott, his stories sharp in both detail and wit, said he’d heard through the parliamentary grapevine that the Conservatives had been instructed by Diefenbaker to always vote against Pearson’s flag. That’s when Scott says he formulated his plan to ensure that the single-leaf design he favoured got the support needed to go back to Parliament.

The committee first had to cull through more than 5,000 flag suggestions either submitted by the public or held over from previous efforts to come up with a suitable banner. Scott said it was relatively easy to get down to three finalists: while some of the submissions were serious attempts at symbolizing Canada, others ranged from depictions of frothy beer mugs to portraits of the Beatles.

Scott says he believed the use of three leaves would create a “disunity flag” because it would always be interpreted as the English, the French and everyone else.

The Social Credit and Créditiste committee members, Scott says, had already come to him with their support so he knew they had the power base to swing the vote; he could spike the Pearson Pennant in favour of the single maple leaf.

The committee voted to determine which of the three proposals would move on. The one with a Union Jack and fleur-de-lis — dubbed Diefenbaker’s Abomination by some — was defeated while the single-leaf and three-leaf designs advanced.

“On the second vote, the Tories were trapped, which is what I had intended all along,” says Scott. “They couldn’t vote for the Pearson Pennant so they’d inevitably vote for the red and white (single-leaf) flag, I was sure of it. The problem was with the Liberals.”

Before the voting, Scott had talked to Walter Gordon, a friend who was also finance minister, and says he delivered a message to Pearson.

He says he asked Gordon to tell Pearson: “ ‘Your flag will never fly.’

“I said ‘I have the votes to kill it and I will do so reluctantly because I like Mr. Pearson and respect him.’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have to be that way, Walter. All he has to do is withdraw his support of his own flag and instruct (Liberal MP John) Matheson to tell (the Liberals) on the committee to vote for the single maple leaf.’

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“He did it. So, on the final vote, all the Conservatives, all the Liberals and all the independents voted for the single maple leaf. We got a unanimous vote. That had been my intention from the very beginning.”

Matheson was Pearson’s point man in the development of a new flag and Scott says he also got him onside.

The Conservatives, assuming the Liberals would side with Pearson, were stunned when the final ballots were counted and they were part of a 14-0 vote in favour of the single-leaf flag. (The chairman didn’t vote.) They regrouped and a vote to determine whether that flag was acceptable as a national flag for Canada passed 10-4, though it would take several more weeks of debate in the House and require parliamentary closure to finally get it approved.

In his book Canada’s Flag, published in 1986, Matheson tells a different story. He says it was Liberal member Grant Deachman who formulated a voting strategy. He also writes that he had already concluded that a single-leaf flag was best and, at their private meeting, he directed Scott and Deachman to examine a prototype of it he had quietly mounted on the wall.

“Almost instantly a consensus was reached and a bargain struck — that design was to become our choice,” wrote Matheson, who died in 2013. “We agreed then that secretly we would select that flag while the tactics of the voting operation and the political strategy were to be left with Grant Deachman.”

Scott, who says he’s the one who put a single-leaf proposal on the wall, says he has no interest in starting another debate. He just wants to tell his version s before it is too late.

“The Liberals said it was their idea to save face for Pearson,” he says. “I don’t care. Everybody shares the credit. The flag we got said exactly what we wanted it to say: One Canada, where everybody is equal under the law.”

So is Scott’s version of events accurate? Flag historian Rick Archbold, who authored the book A Flag for Canada, says there’s no way to prove history didn’t unfold that way.

“Scott may well have been one of the people who helped create the situation where the Tories all voted for the single maple leaf by accident,” said Archbold.

“It’s possible that he sent a message to Pearson,” said Archbold. “I found no evidence of that other than his story whereas there is pretty good evidence that Deachman and Matheson went to Pearson and said, ‘Here’s the situation.’ But if he says he did it, who’s to argue with him? You can’t prove he didn’t and it may well be that Pearson got two messages, one from Reid Scott and one from the Liberal members of the committee. (Scott) was there and was a key part of making it happen, no question. He’s our living witness.”

Scott, who was also an Ontario MPP, Toronto councillor and a provincial court judge, says there is something he’s never made public, something that happened when the Canadian flag was flown on Parliament Hill for the first time in 1965.

“Just as it got to the top, a wind came across the lawn and blew it out in its full glory,” he recalled. “I was so proud being a part of that, I cried.”

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