Flag of Saint Lucia

How to read it

The artist Dunstan St Omer designed the flag in a national competition for Saint Lucia’s statehood in 1967; Norway’s Store norske leksikon dates its first use to 1 March 1967, and it was kept when the country became independent on 22 February 1979. The government’s page quotes St Omer’s description: on a plain blue field, a white and a black triangle with a gold triangle at their base, in the centre. The triangles are laid one on another, black on white and gold on black, and share a common base one third of the length of the flag. The white shows 3.8 cm (1½ in) on each side of the black, and the peaks of the black and white triangles are 10 cm (4 in) apart. The government gives the sizes as 1.8 m by 0.9 m (6 ft by 3 ft) and 23 by 11.4 cm (9 by 4½ in): two units long for every one high.

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The Pitons and the two cultures

The government’s page says the triangle, an isosceles triangle, is reminiscent of the twin Pitons at Soufrière, rising sheer out of the sea towards the sky, and that the Pitons are themselves a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the people; a few lines earlier the same page calls the three triangles “three pitons”. Black and white stand for the cultural influences, the white part for the white culture and the black part for the black culture, “the two races living and working in unity”. The description adds that the design shows the dominance of the black culture over that of Europe, against a background of sunshine and blue sea.

The encyclopedia reads the flag as a landscape: the blue is the sea, and the gold is the island’s sandy shores, from which the black volcanic mountains rise.

The other design St Omer entered

St Omer told The Voice in February 2015, three months before he died, that he had entered two designs. “It was the time of Black awareness,” he said, and the other was a green flag with a black eagle on it, which the authorities found too radical; they chose the milder one. The competition offered a prize of $100.

Did the flag change at independence?

The sources differ. The Voice wrote in 2015 that St Omer’s flag was “retained intact” at independence in 1979. The Norwegian encyclopedia says it was kept but with a different blue and steeper triangles.

The government’s flag code

The government’s code of etiquette says the flag is flown every day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and at half-staff in mourning, on occasions the Cabinet decides. It is not flown with the peaks pointing down except as a signal of distress, and it is not to be printed on clothing or furniture.