The flag was created by
Laurentian University professor
Gaétan Gervais in conjunction with students Michel Dupuis, Donald Obonsawin and Yves Tassé, and was flown for the first time at the
University of Sudbury building on September 25, 1975. The flag was made available as a graphic on
vehicle registration plates in Ontario in 2003. In 2003 a controversy arose in
Sudbury when the city government voted against flying the flag at
Tom Davies Square for
St-Jean-Baptiste Day, claiming that it would be inappropriate for the city government to display on public property a symbol representative of only a portion of the city's population. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Franco-Ontarian flag in September 2005,
Prise de parole, a Sudbury-based publishing house, published a book titled
Le Drapeau franco-ontarien (edited by Guy Gaudreau, a history professor at Laurentian University.) and the
flag of Canada in
Harty, 2007 On September 25, 2006, the largest Franco-Ontarian flag was unfurled in Ottawa. The historical park, also known as Les Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa, was built by the francophone community to commemorate francophone contribution in the development and well-being of the City of Ottawa. This first of six Monuments de la francophonie d'Ottawa is dedicated to the subject of education. The flag is 5 x 10 m and was raised on a 27 m pole. In 2010, the Ontario government designated September 25 as Franco-Ontarian Day. The date was chosen as it represented the anniversary of the flag. In 2017, the
Ontario Heritage Trust placed a permanent historical plaque at the University of Sudbury building to commemorate the creation of the flag. Following the controversial cutbacks to French-language services announced by the government of
Doug Ford in 2018, governments in
Quebec began to fly the Franco-Ontarian flag as a gesture of solidarity. The flag was hoisted at
Montreal City Hall on November 23, and at the
National Assembly of Quebec on December 1. On September 21, 2020, Ontario Parliament passed Amendment to Franco-Ontarian Emblem Act, 2001 proposed by
Progressive Conservative MPP from
Mississauga Centre,
Natalia Kusendova, to designate the Franco-Ontarian flag as an official emblem of Ontario. It received royal assent and became law on September 24, 2020. ==See also==