Windproof flag makes flapless debut

A flag is generally a rectangular piece of decorative cloth attached to a pole. It's at its best when it’s fluttering in a breeze or flapping in a gale.

Or so you would think.

But for my father, who hangs a 1.5 metre-long (five foot) government-issue maple-leaf flag each Canada Day from the second storey of his house, the fluttering and flapping generates problems.

At times, his flag flies so fast in the wind that it wraps itself tightly around its horizontal flagstaff and remains there.

He tried weighting the flag by attaching large metal washers with safety pins to its corners to keep it free, but the wind was so sharp it knocked them off.

In frustration, he decided to make a windproof flag out of a brick he found in an alley. It seemed a suitable shape for a flag, he said.

“I don’t have to worry about it wrapping itself around the flagstaff because it sits on its flagstaff,” he said. “The only thing I have to worry about is a raccoon knocking it off and smashing it.” ~


More to come on this topic later~