Canadian pale
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In vexillology and heraldry, a Canadian pale is the centre of a flag (or a charge in heraldry) that is a square or rectangle covering half the length of a flag rather than a rectangle covering a third as in a tricolour. It is named after the Canadian flag, which is the most prominent flag to have such a feature.
No other national flag has a Canadian pale, but a number of sub-national and municipal flags use it, especially in Canada. The cities of Edmonton, Alberta, Cornwall, Ontario and Burlington, Ontario and the Canadian Northwest Territories all feature a Canadian pale on their flags, for example.
The most widely known proposed flag of Taiwan is a green flag with a Canadian pale charged with four red hearts arranged to form a flower.
Occasionally, the term is used to refer to any flag with a larger central panel, irrespective of whether or not it is square or covers half the flag. By this looser description, the flag of Norfolk Island and the flag of Iowa are sometimes considered to have a Canadian Pale.
By analogy, any flag which has a central horizontal stripe that is half the height of the flag is sometimes said to have a Spanish fess.
