The man who designed the Saskatchewan Flag died yesterday.

Anthony Drake, who designed the flag back in 1969 when he was a teacher in Hodgeville, died at his home in England at 81.

Drake last came to Saskatchewan back in 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the flag. During a ceremony in Swift Current, he spoke about what the flag has meant to him.

“It’s kind of pride and a pleasure to think that I was just an ordinary school teacher,” he said. “I still have this modest feeling that it’s been a wonderful thing that I’ve achieved, and it’s something that I will always remember. I’ve put something into my life that wouldn’t have been there otherwise, something very worth having.”

Drake designed the flag due to a contest that the province was having. He joked that he entered the contest for the $1,000 price money.

“I did it with thin coloured cards that they use in schools. I got a pile of those in different colours and put them on various different items to try and put them together.”

Drake originally designed 13 different flags and explained the design that won it all.

“The first thing that struck me was the appearance of the province. That’s an essential part of the flag. Looking at the general nature of the province, I saw that in the north, there were a lot of trees and grass, and in the south was all crops growing, wheat and other things. That always seemed to look like a creamy yellow colour. So, the green and yellow I thought would be the idea. I put those on, and then I thought, well, it couldn’t be just green and yellow.”

“I thought the shield would be another perfect thing to put in the top left-hand corner,” Drake continued. “Then I thought about the bottom right-hand corner and about certain possibilities like maybe the famous Saskatchewan bird, or tree, or whatever. I looked and discovered that a certain flower was the provincial flower in the sense that it was theirs. I got a picture of that and was quite surprised and amazed (at) how superb it looked.”

Gail Hapanowicz is the owner of ‘Home of the Sk. Flag’. Hapanowicz originally brought Drake over back in 2019 and organized.

“Anthony, he was humble. He was such a humble man; he always felt that he didn’t deserve all the praise.”

Hapanowicz remembers Drake’s last words to her back on his birthday on April 19.

“It was so pleasant doing all those things in Saskatchewan, and it was something I will never forget.”