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Hay River, Northwest Territories (Canada)

1:2 image by Eugene Ipavec
Source: Canadian City Flags, Raven 18

Hay River
Current Flag
- Design
- Symbolism
- Selection
- Designer
Unofficial flag
K'atl'odeeche First Nation

See also:

Hay River

Hay River, with a population of 3864 (as of 1996; 253 on Hay River Reserve), was formerly called by the traditional name of Xatl'o Deh (meaning precisely "Hay River") and is located at 60°61'N lat. and 115°44'W long., on the south shore of Great Slave Lake on the mouth of the Hay River. Local languages are South Slavey, Chipewya and English, and the community belongs to the electoral districts of Hay River North and Hay River South and to the land claim area of Deh Cho Treaty 11.
Antonio Martins, 27 June 2000

Current Flag

Text and image(s) from Canadian City Flags, Raven 18 (2011), courtesy of the North American Vexillological Association, which retains copyright. Image(s) by permission of Eugene Ipavec.

Design

The flag of the Town of Hay River is a Canadian pale design of dark blue-white-dark blue, with the emblem of Hay River in the centre, nearly the full height of the flag. The emblem is a circle with eight spokes, all in medium blue, surmounted by a black sans-serif H, its height three-fourths the interior diameter of the circle. Directly above the circle is a black vertical line with a diamond-shaped arrow tip divided black on the left and white on the right. Above the circle is a medium blue line zigzagging from 10 to 2 o’clock and edged above by a yellow line of equal width. Below the circle curving closely along its base is HUB OF THE NORTH in black sans-serif letters.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Symbolism

Standing at the mouth of the Hay River on Great Slave Lake, the town is a harbour for water transportation in the western Arctic to the Beaufort Sea. The community also has a commercial fishing industry and hosts a Canadian Coast Guard base. The blue eight-spoked circle represents a ship’s wheel, symbolizing the community’s nautical trade. The “H” and “Hub of the North” reflect Hay River’s role as a centre of commerce in this area of the Northwest Territories. Hay River also is a terminus of the Canadian National Railway; the Mackenzie Highway, an all-weather, uninterrupted road from the south, ends here; and the town has an airport with daily flights. The arrow points north and the zigzag lines represent the northern lights (aurora borealis).
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Selection

All such NWT and Nunavut civic flags were designed in 1985 for the Northwest Territories Exhibition Hall at Vancouver’s Expo ’86, at the initiative of heraldry enthusiast Michael Moore, then a deputy minister at the NWT Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA). The side-bar colours of these Canadian pale designs vary from dark blue, to green, to brown, and to bright red.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Designer

Rob Butler, graphic artist at Inkit Graphics in Yellowknife, NWT, designed the flag based on the symbol designed by former mayor D.M. Stewart and Mrs. N.J. Mackie, a member of the municipal staff.
Jim Croft, Canadian City Flags, Raven 18, 2011

Unofficial flag

image by Jens Pattke, 13 October 2013

This is the logo flag of the town of Hay River, NWT, Canada. The flag consists of a white field with the town logo in the center. The flag is unofficial. It is used only for tourist purposes. For the official flag of the Town of Hay River see please the flag at the top of this page.
Reference: http://hayriver.lgant.ca/
Jens Pattke, 13 October 2013

image by Ivan Sache, 31 October 2019

Here is nice photo of the town flag in 2011: https://www.friendshipforcewmich.org/uploads/2/4/0/4/24043940/hay-river-9_orig.jpg. It shows that the flag is Canadian pale of light-blue stripes with logo in the white stripe. The town's website shows the newest logo, so it may be that the flag is changed again, but I didn't find any information about such possibility https://hayriver.com/
Valentin Poposki, 31 October 2019

K'atl'odeeche First Nation

image by Janis Lasmanis, 4 April 2019