The National Flag of Canada, popularly known as the Maple Leaf and l'Unifolie (French for "the one-leaved"), is a base red flag with a white square in its centre featuring a stylized, 11-pointed, red maple leaf.
Canada, after the First World War, increasingly used various versions of the Canadian Red Ensign as the de facto national flag (along with the Union Jack). Mackenzie King, who was Prime Minister intermittently from the 1920s through the 1940s, had sought to introduce the use of the Red Ensign as an intermediate measure in inculcating among Canadians the idea of a distinctively Canadian national flag.
The Maple Leaf Flag has been used officially since its adoption in 1965.
