when is the mitchell freeway going to be extended

The Mitchell Freeway is planned to continue north to the Metropolitan Region Scheme's boundary, beyond Yanchep and Two Rocks.[45] The state government announced in March 2012 the formation of the Mitchell Freeway Extension Community Working Group.[46] The group worked with Main Roads Western Australia to investigate options for relieving congestion, with a focus on the next freeway extension.[47] Several options were considered,[48] before the group released a strategic business case in November 2012.[49] The report recommends a staged approach, starting with intersection improvements between 2013 and 2015. This was followed by a freeway extension to Hester Avenue in 2017. An expressway standard extension to Romeo Road, Alkimos is proposed to be completed by 2021.[49]

Mitchell Freeway

Mitchell Freeway is a 30-kilometre-long (19Â mi) freeway in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, linking central Perth with the satellite city of Joondalup. It is the northern section of State Route 2, which continues south as Kwinana Freeway and Forrest Highway. Along its length are interchanges with several major roads, including Graham Farmer Freeway and Reid Highway. The southern terminus of the Mitchell Freeway is at the Narrows Bridge, which crosses the Swan River, and the northern terminus is at Hester Avenue, Clarkson, a suburb within the City of Wanneroo.

Planning for the route began in the 1950s, and the first segment in central Perth was constructed between 1967 and 1973. The Mitchell Freeway has been progressively extended north since then. In the 1970s, the first two extensions were completed, up to Hutton Street in Osborne Park. By the end of the 1980s, the freeway had reached Ocean Reef Road in Edgewater. The Joondalup railway line was constructed in the freeway median in the early 1990s. This  necessitated the relocation of a section of the southbound carriageway, and the construction of three new bridges. In conjunction with these works, additional lanes were constructed in the realigned section.

Since the 1990s, extensions to the Mitchell Freeway have taken it to Burns Beach Road at the northern edge of Joondalup. During 2013, two sections of the northbound carriageway will be widened with an additional lane. In August 2017, an extension was completed to Hester Avenue, after construction starting in 2014. Further works are planned, which will take the freeway past Yanchep and Two Rocks to the boundary of the Perth Metropolitan Region.

The Mitchell Freeway is the northern section of State Route 2. It commences at the northern end of the Narrows Bridge, Perth, continuing from Kwinana Freeway, and terminates just north of the satellite city of Joondalup at Burns Beach Road, Currambine. All intersections with the freeway are via grade separated interchanges. The speed limit is 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph) except in central Perth, where the limit is reduced to 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) as the freeway interchanges with Graham Farmer Freeway and Mounts Bay Road.[2] South of Hepburn Avenue, the freeway has 3 to 5 lanes in each direction. From that point north, there are mostly two lanes in each direction, expanding to three lanes between Hodges Drive and Shenton Avenue. The median strip of the freeway also houses the Joondalup railway line, with all but two of the line's stations also built on the strip. Additionally, a shared pedestrian and bicycle path is built alongside most of the freeway.[3][4][5]

The section near the Perth city centre, within the City of Perth local government area (LGA), features many partial access interchanges. The Narrows Interchange is located just north of the Narrows Bridge, on the eastern edge of Kings Park. This is a hybrid interchange connecting the freeway with Mounts Bay Road and Riverside Drive, over a distance of 800 metres (2,600Â ft).[6] There is complete access to and from Mounts Bay Road via a standard northbound exit ramp and looped ramps for the other movements. There is a partial Y-Interchange incorporated for direct access to and from Riverside Drive via a southbound exit ramp and a northbound entrance ramp. All other traffic movements must be made via Mounts Bay Road. The Riverside Drive entrance ramp merges with the Mounts Bay Road northbound entrance ramp. The southbound exit ramp is similarly shared, before diverging for three destinations: Mounts Bay Road, Riverside Drive, and the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre car park. The main northbound exit to Hay Street is via an access road, which begins on the Mounts Bay Road exit ramp. The access road rejoins the freeway as an outside lane on the shared Riverside Drive and Mounts Bay Road entrance ramp. The Hay Street exit ramp, a short distance later, can be accessed from the two outermost lanes. This allows the traffic entering the freeway from the ramp to continue north or exit at Hay Street without weaving.[1][7][8]

The freeway continues north-westerly for 240 metres (790 ft),[6] splitting Mount Street in half, and passing under Malcolm Street. After this, it turns north-easterly for 500 metres (1,600 ft),[6] and lines up  with the city blocks between George and Elder streets, a pair of one way frontage roads. The freeway also marks the boundary between Perth and West Perth. Partial access is provided to or from all the roads that the freeway crosses over (or under in the case of Hay Street), with the exception of Roe Street. North of Roe Street, the freeway turns north-west towards Glendalough over the course of 1.1 kilometres (0.68 mi).[6] In this section the freeway marks the boundary between the City of Perth and City of Vincent LGAs. There is a full Y-Interchange here with Graham Farmer Freeway, which bypasses the Perth city centre via a tunnel, and provides access to Perth Airport. Combined with this interchange is a partial Y-Interchange with Charles Street. The southbound entrance ramp merges with, and northbound exit ramp diverges from, the Graham Farmer Freeway ramps. There is a traffic light controlled intersection with Newcastle Street at the northern end of these ramps. Charles Street is the start of State Route 60, an alternative route to Perth's northern suburbs and areas north of the Perth Metropolitan Region. Located in the vicinity of these interchanges are the Sutherland Street northbound entrance ramp, from West Perth, and a southbound exit ramp to both James Street, Northbridge, and Wellington Street, Perth. The Loftus Street overpass, near the northwestern end of the Graham Farmer Freeway ramps, is the edge of the City of Perth LGA; beyond this point the freeway is the boundary between West Leederville in the Town of Cambridge and Leederville in the City of Vincent.[1][7][8]

In the northern suburbs of Perth, most of the interchanges are standard diamond interchanges, and the rest are modified versions, which have ramps missing or replaced with loop ramps. The first interchange 0.9 kilometres (0.56 mi)[6] north-west of West Perth, is with Vincent Street and Lake Monger Drive. This interchange has a looped southbound entry ramp, so that Leederville Parade can join to the south side of intersection with Vincent Street and the southbound ramps. The northbound exit ramp terminates at Southport Street, 200 metres (660 ft) south of Vincent Street and Lake Monger Drive. The freeway then proceeds northwest for 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi)[6] alongside Lake Monger's eastern edge, after which there is a half diamond interchange with Powis Street, with only a northbound exit ramp and a southbound entrance ramp. The freeway continues north, now within the City of Stirling LGA, through Osborne Park, until it reaches Hutton Street after 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi).[6] There are several local roads in Osborne Park that have T-Junction intersections with the freeway ramps south of Hutton Street. These are McDonald Street West and Hector Street West, with the northbound exit ramp; and Cape Street, Hector Street, and McDonald Street with southbound entry ramps. The freeway has an 3.2-kilometre (2.0 mi)[6] S-curve after Hutton Street, moving to an alignment further west that does not bisect any suburbs. The interchanges with Cedric Street on the S-curve, and Karrinyup Road at the end of the S-curve, are diamond interchanges. There are slight modifications to the entrance and exit ramps between these roads, which merge for 500 metres (0.31 mi), requiring traffic to weave. The curved section is the boundary between Stirling to the east of the freeway, and Osborne Park and Innaloo to the west.[1][7][9]

The next interchange, after 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi),[6] is with Erindale Road. It is another half diamond interchange, with only northbound exit and southbound entrance ramps. Beyond Erindale Road, the suburb to the east of the freeway is Balcatta, and 1.3 kilometres (4,300 ft)[6] further north is Reid Highway, with the southbound entry ramp looped. Balcatta Road joins the intersection of the southbound ramps with Reid Highway. Reid Highway, together with Tonkin Highway, provides a limited-access route to Perth Airport.
North of Reid Highway, Mitchell Freeway divides Carine to west from Hamersley to the east. There is no access to next major road, Beach Road. It forms the border between the City of Stirling and City of Joondalup LGAs; as well as between Carine and Duncraig west of the freeway, and Hamersley and Warwick to the east. However, Warwick Road's interchange is only 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi)[6] north of Reid Highway. It is a standard diamond interchange, but weaving is required between Reid Highway and Warwick Road due to the short distance between the interchanges. Greenwood is located north of Warwick Road and east of the freeway.[1][7][9]

The following two interchanges, after 2.6 kilometres (1.6 mi)[6] and 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi)[6] respectively, are with Hepburn Avenue and Whitfords Avenue. The Hepburn Avenue interchange is located at the corners of Duncraig, Greenwood, Kingsley, Western Australia, and Padbury; while the Whitfords Avenue interchange is located at the corner of Kingsley, Padbury, Cragie, and Woodvale. Each interchange also provides access for the railway stations in the median (Greenwood and Whitfords respectively) via the southbound entry ramps, which are two-way north of the carparks' entrances. North of here, over a distance of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi),[6] are standard diamond interchanges with Ocean Reef Road, Hodges Drive, and Shenton Avenue, which provide access to Joondalup city centre, and Joondalup Health Campus, east of the freeway. West of the freeway are the suburbs of Heathridge, Connolly and Currambine. After 700 metres (2,300 ft)[6] the freeway passes under Moore Drive, and then terminates at Burns Beach Road, 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi)[6] further north. Until the freeway is extended, access to areas further north is provided by Marmion Avenue to the west of the terminus, or via Wanneroo Road to the east.[1][7][9]

The Mitchell Freeway began as a highway proposed in the Metropolitan Region Scheme in the mid-1950s.[10] The original plan took the route, then known as Yanchep Highway,[11]:137 inland from what is now known as Karrinyup Road to the intersection of Wanneroo Road and Balcatta Road.[10] However, the first gazetted edition of the Metropolitan Region Scheme, from 1963, shows a controlled-access highway along the current freeway alignment.[12] The later plan only detailed the route up until a point east of Sorrento, at a proposed east-west controlled-access highway on the modern day Hepburn Avenue alignment.[12]

Detailed design on the first stage of the freeway, from the Narrows Bridge to Sutherland Street at the northern edge of the city, began in 1960, and took several years to be completed.[11]:187–89 The design included a complex interchange at the Narrows Bridge that was to be built on reclaimed land that was mostly soft mud.[11]:187–9 Ground improvement works, which included the installations of 43,000 sand drains, began in 1964;[11]:189 demolition of buildings in the freeway's path commenced in 1965. The freeway was completed in three sections, under three separate contracts.[11]:213 Construction on the central section from Mount Street to Wellington Street started on 18 November 1966, following a groundbreaking ceremony conducted by Premier David Brand. It was opened to traffic two years later, connected to the Narrows Bridge via a temporary Bailey Bridge over Mounts Bay Road.[11]:213 The new road carried up to 1400 vehicles per hour during peak hours.[11]:215

Work on the section north of Wellington Street, known as the Hamilton Interchange, began in October 1969. It was partially opened on 17 November 1971, but was not completed until 4 October 1972.[11]:215 The final part of the project to be completed was the Narrows Interchange. Construction began in 1970 with the installation of thirteen caissons, which would house foundation columns. Placement of the caissons was difficult; as well as sinking vertically as intended, they also tilted and slid horizontally. Corrections were made by selective excavation, blasting bedrock, and applying tension via guy-wires.[11]:215–18 Following the foundation works, construction proceeded swiftly; most of the work was completed by 1972.[11]:217 Premier John Tonkin opened the interchange on 30 November 1973.[11]:219 This initial section functioned only as a distributor for Narrows Bridge traffic accessing Perth's central business district or adjacent areas to the north-west.[13] Whilst initially referred to as the "Western Switch Road", it was renamed after the former Western Australia State Premier and Governor Sir James Mitchell, on 5 June 1963.[11]:187 [14][15]

Several stages were built through the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The first extension of the freeway was nearly a mile long (1.6 km), taking the freeway to Vincent Street. This stage also included a long, curving bridge, eight-span bridge connecting northbound traffic to Charles Street. The construction of this stage, which began in February 1974, resulted in the suburb of Leederville being split in two.[11]:261 [16] Residential and industrial buildings were demolished, and streets were cut off on both sides of the freeway's path. The extension opened to traffic on 8 March 1976,[17] having cost $15.15 million.[11]:261 It was opened by the state Minister for Transport, Mr R J O’Connor, MLA. A commemorative plaque was located under the bridge leading to Charles Street.[18]

The design of Stage 3 of the freeway, a 4.8-kilometre (3.0 mi) section extending to Hutton Street, was completed in 1974. The existing soil was not suitable for construction, as the area generally consisted of soft peat and old landfills. In 1975, the ground was consolidated with 720,000 cubic metres (25,000,000 cu ft) of sand.[11]:261 Construction took place between 1976 and 1978, with the section opened by the Minister for Transport, David Wordsworth, on 2 June 1978.[11]:261 [17][19] A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Powis Street bridge.[20] This stage cost $12.5 million, and received the Institution of Engineers Australia's Western Australian Division Engineering Excellence Award in 1978.[11]:261

After a four-year gap, construction of Stage 4 began, which would take the freeway to Erindale Road.[19] The first half of the stage, up to Karrinyup Road, opened on 12 December 1983, while the project wasn't complete until 21 September 1984.[11]:308 [17] It was opened by the state Minister for Transport Julian Grill, MLA. This section completed 24 kilometres (15 mi) of freeway in Perth, from Bull Creek to Balcatta.[21] The next two stages were constructed together, extending the freeway to Hepburn Avenue. Stage 5 was from Erindale to Warwick Road, and involved excavating a large quantity of material, including 600,000 tonnes (590,000 long tons; 660,000 short tons) of limestone. That stage cost $22.73 million, while Stage 6 only cost $8.06 million.[11]:308–9 Both stages were opened together, on 6 August 1986.[11]:309 [17] The first stage of Reid Highway (then known as the North Perimeter Highway[22]) was built at the same time, and opened on 16 May 1986.[17] A further extension to Ocean Reef Road was opened on 2 July 1988 by the Federal Minister for Transport, Peter Morris,[23] at a cost of $17.5 million. The state and federal governments provided most of the funds, $9.7 million and $5.2 million respectively. The City of Wanneroo contributed $1.3 million, Joondalup Development Corporation $1 million, and land developers $300,000, as they wanted the freeway built ahead of schedule to stimulate local development.[11]:309–10

In 1991 and 1992,[17] the median strip of the entire freeway was significantly widened to accommodate the Joondalup railway line, being built under the Northern Suburbs Transit System project. The line was to be located in the middle of the road reserve, between the freeway carriageways. At the time, the northbound and southbound carriageways, between Loftus Street and McDonald Street, were positioned next to each other, with space for future widening located on the eastern side of the road reserve.[11]:395Â [24] Initially, three new road bridges were constructed over Vincent Street, Powis Street, and Scarborough Beach Road. Once the road bridges had been completed and surfacing works completed, the southbound carriage was relocated, creating the required space for the railway line construction. Additional lanes were constructed in the realigned section, funded from regular road funding sources, whilst the bridges and some associated works were included as part of the costs for the Northern Suburbs Transit System project.[24]

After a 7-year-hiatus, a 3-kilometre (1.9Â mi) extension to Hodges Drive was opened by the Premier Richard Court in December 1999, two months ahead of schedule.[25] The project also included widening the section between Karrinyup Road and Hepburn Avenue to three lanes in each direction.[25][26]

After another 7-year-hiatus, construction began on a 4-kilometre extension to Burns Beach Road, with a diamond interchange at Shenton Avenue and an overpass for Moore Drive.[27] Local residents were opposed to aspects of the initial plans, such as the design of a section near a primary school and the clearing of native vegetation. The state government therefore established the Community Consultative Working Group and later the Construction Reference Group, composed of members of the local community. The input from these groups resulted in several changes to the design.[28][29] The project was managed by Main Roads in conjunction with Macmahon Contractors. Construction of the extension was initially planned for May 2006, but began on 14 December 2006. By July 2008, 90% of the works had been completed and the new section was predicted to open in September 2008.[30][31] However, the official opening was not until 2 November 2008, when the road was opened by Western Australia's Minister for Transport, Simon O'Brien, and the previous Minister for Planning and Infrastructure Alannah MacTiernan.[17][27] The $160 million project was completed $10 million under budget.[32] The opening was celebrated with a procession of vintage cars along the new freeway segment.[33]

The latest extension was a 6-kilometre stretch between Burns Beach Road and Hester Avenue. In December 2012, the State Government announced the freeway would be extended to Hester Avenue between 2014–15 and 2016–17, over a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi).[34][35][36] The extension included interchanges at Burns Beach Road and Neerabup Road.[34][36] Work on the extension began with a ground-breaking ceremony on 20 May 2015.[37] The projected cost was $261.4 million, with the federal government contributing  $209.1 million and the state government funding the remaining $52.3 million.[37] The project scope included a six-kilometre (3.7 mi) dual carriageway extension to Hester Avenue, Clarkson, with grade-separated interchanges at Burns Beach Road, Neerabup Road and Hester Avenue. Other roads in the area were upgraded, including widening Hester Avenue and Wanneroo Road, and extending Neerabup Road east to the intersection of Flynn Drive and Wanneroo Road.[38] The project was completed on 3 August 2017, opened by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Premier Mark McGowan and Transport Minister Rita Safiioti.[39]

In its 2011/12 budget, the State Government committed $30 million for the widening of Mitchell Freeway northbound between Hepburn Avenue and Hodges Drive from two to three lanes.[40][41] Traffic volumes in the preceding years had increased rapidly, almost reaching the previously projected 2016 traffic volume of 40,000 vehicles per day.[41][42] The resulting congestion in the afternoon traffic peak increases the chances of rear-end crashes as well as driver frustration. Construction of the third lane began in February 2013, and is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.[needs update] A 4.5-kilometre (2.8 mi) section from Hepburn Avenue to Ocean Reef Road opened in August 2013. As part of the project, the existing lanes will be resurfaced afterwards, during the summer months of 2013–14[needs update]. The design of the freeway is such that no bridgeworks will be required on overpasses, and rail services in the median will not be affected.[42]

The freeway has also been expanded with an extra lane northbound between Perth and Hutton Street, in conjunction with works to increase the capacity of the Graham Farmer Freeway tunnel. Works progressed in two stages, with Vincent Street as the midpoint. As part of the project, the overpasses at Powis Street, Vincent Street and Scarborough Beach Road have been widened. An additional slip lane has been constructed, from Graham Farmer Freeway's Loftus Street exit ramp to Mitchell Freeway northbound, to access Vincent Street without changing lanes to the left lanes of Mitchell Freeway northbound. The project commenced in February 2013 and was completed in December 2013.[43][44]

In October 2012 the state government announced that the freeway's diamond interchange with Reid Highway will be upgraded with the installation of extra turning lanes and traffic lights. The project is an interim solution to lower congestion and reduce the volume of traffic using local roads to avoid the interchange.[50][51] The longer term plan is to upgrade Reid Highway to a dual carriageway near the freeway interchange, including a second overpass bridge.[50] The dual carriageway works are scheduled for construction in 2014â€“15[needs update].[34]

The entire freeway is in the Perth Metropolitan Region.


where did the term man cave come from

A man cave[1] or manspace,[2] and less commonly a manland or mantuary is a male retreat[3] or sanctuary[4] in a home, such as a specially equipped garage,[5] spare bedroom,[4] media room,[6] den,[7] or basement.[7][8] The term "man cave" is a metaphor describing a room inside the house such as the basement or garage or attic or office, or outside the house such as a wood shed or tool room where "guys can do as they please", without fear of upsetting any female sensibility about house decor or design.[9] Paula Aymer of Tufts University calls it the "last bastion of masculinity".[9] The phrase is thought to come from the 1993 publication, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.[10]

Man cave

While a wife may have substantial authority over a whole house in terms of design and decoration, she generally has no say about what gets "mounted on the walls" of a man's personal space.[9] Since it may be accepted that a woman has input on the decoration of the rest of the house, a man cave or man-space is in some sense a reaction to feminine domestic power.[9]

Man caves have multiple purposes: they are a place to be alone, to indulge in hobbies, and to hang out with male friends. It is, loosely, a male-only space to retreat to watch sports matches,[11] or play video games.[7][12] According to psychiatrist and author Scott Haltzman, it is important for a man to have a place to call his own, referring to a male area to which to retreat. Rules are relaxed; it is a place where other people's sensibilities about standards of cleanliness are not necessarily observed.[2]

In a sense, for married men, it is a way to recreate some of the space and freedom of their bachelor days since it was like a "pad" similar in feeling to a frat house game room or a college dorm room where people could come and go "as if they owned the place."[2] It is where a man doesn't have to be on his best behavior, where no women are around, and where "no one is going to make you watch your p's and q's" and "no one is going to ask you to explain yourself".[2] Writer and handyman Sam Martin explained:

Men have had an identity problem since the women's movement. They have tried to figure out who they're supposed to be. For a while women wanted them to be more sensitive, so they were more sensitive. Then women wanted them to be more manly. One of the things I discovered is when men have their own manspace, what they put inside of it is really an expression of who they are. Manspace is about establishing an identity for a man. Our premise is that women have control of the look and the feel of the house and that left guys wanting more. Anybody who has a specific interest or hobby or work or collection is going to want a space to indulge that.

Martin thinks that any space in the house will do, even a lounge chair and a set of headphones, provided there's an agreement with one's wife or girlfriend that the space is under the control of the man.[13] The advantages of a self-contained room are that male-oriented design choices, such as "tacky lamps" and "beer-can sculptures", are out of sight of women, but in a way that doesn't disturb female sensibilities since visitors generally don't visit the man cave.[13] It's like a firehouse lounge room, but in the home.[14]

According to several sources, the general architectural and design trend is for men to take traditionally male-only spaces, and enhance them with improvements and masculine aesthetic choices. Man caves can be equipped with accessories such as refrigerators,[5][15][16] vending machines,[6][15] putting greens, kegerators,[4] giant TVs,[4] musical instruments including gear such as microphone stands and amplifiers,[8][9] pool tables, boxing rings,[13] and entertainment centers. A man cave may also be fitted out with a bar and sports memorabilia such as trophies.[9][12] In the book Where Men Hide which Publishers Weekly described as an affable but only “sometimes thought provoking” guide, author James Twitchell and photographer Ken Ross explore areas where men like to be alone.[17] According to Twitchell, some public male-only spaces, such as the barbershop, are declining, while other spaces are taking their places, and the author tries to show the attractions of the "grimy garage."[17] The book suggests that "men make their own spaces for good or ill", according to Publishers Weekly.[17] Twitchell focused on communal man cave spaces such as male-only groups in megachurches, possibly a modern-day replacement for declining attendance at male-only clubs such as Masonic lodges.[18] Twitchell noted that some anthropologists have speculated that these spots are a place for men to bond before hunting or war, and where they can "smoke or fart" and tell the "same jokes over and over again."[18]

One man redecorated the space to look like a replica model of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise from the TV show Star Trek.[13] Upscale sports-themed furnishings are also available to outfit a man cave.[6] These rooms are also often decorated by the male, with little or no female influence. The room must be large enough (greater than 20 sq ft) to easily accommodate a big screen television, which is useful for watching sports games with buddies.[9] Since it is an area set off from the rest of the house, it's possible to make noise, or yell at the television, without fear of reprisals from a wife, girlfriend or mother.[9]

Garages have typically been a man space since they're often lit by "harsh fluorescent bulbs" and lack heat or air conditioning but nevertheless present a guy with an "opportunity to disappear for hours while never leaving the premises."[2] There are some reports suggesting that some men are likely to "lavish time, money and attention on fixing this spot up".[2] Places in houses which have been typically associated with male-oriented chores, such as garages, basements and sheds which have not been "particularly welcoming spaces" when shared with storage items and garbage, are being fixed up to be more suitable as full-time living spaces, with more thought to design and planning.[13]

One man cave of a Gillette corporation executive has a desk, "a chess board that's always set up, never used".[9] But sometimes there are limits; his wife has not yet agreed to let him smoke cigars in it.[9]

Some ladies have set up "women-caves" for such things as crafts.[19] Sometimes they are known as girl-caves.[20] The term "she-sheds" is becoming popular in recent times. Some analysts have described the manosphere as an online counterpart to the man-cave.[21]

In the book by Sam Martin, entitled Manspace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory, the author suggested there were several spots from pop culture:


who owns san miguel beer corporation in the philippines

San Miguel Corporation (PSE:Â SMC) is a Filipino multinational publicly listed conglomerate holding company. It is the largest publicly listed food, beverage and packaging company in Southeast Asia as well as the Philippines' largest corporation in terms of revenue, with over 17,000 employees in over 100 major facilities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

San Miguel Corporation

Its flagship product, San Miguel Beer, is one of the largest selling beers and among the top ten selling beer brands in the world. San Miguel's manufacturing operations extend beyond its home market to Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia; and its products are exported to 60 markets around the world.

Since 2008, SMC has ventured beyond its core businesses, becoming involved in fuel & oil (Petron Corporation), power generation and infrastructure. It was briefly involved in Philippine Airlines from April 2012 to September 2014.[1][2][3]

In 1889, a well-known Manila businessman, Don Enrique María Barretto de Ycaza y Esteban, applied for a royal grant from Spain to establish a brewery in the Philippines. He was awarded the grant for a period of twenty years. On September 29, 1890 (Michaelmas, or the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel), La Fábrica de Cerveza San Miguel was declared open for business. Located at 6 Calzada de Malacañang (later called Calle Avilés), the brewery took its name from its neighbourhood, the arrabal (suburb or district) of San Miguel. The facility had two sections: one devoted to the production of ice with a daily capacity of 5 tonnes, and the other to beer production. The brewery was the first in Southeast Asia using the most modern equipment and facilities of the day. With 70 employees, the plant produced 3,600 hectolitres (about 47,000 cases) of lager beer during the first year and subsequently produced other types of beer, notably Cerveza Negra, Eagle Extra Stout and Doble Bock.

Early success led to the expansion of the business and Barretto decided to incorporate his brewery. On 6 June 1893, the company was incorporated and registered with a capital of P180,000. Those forming the corporation were Don Pedro Pablo Róxas y Castro, Don Gonzalo Tuasón y Patiño, Don Vicente D. Fernández y Castro, Don Albino Goyenechea, Benito Legarda y Tuáson, the heirs of Don Mariano Buenaventura y Chuidan and Barretto.

Róxas was soon appointed manager, playing a prominent role in the development of the firm. He was the active member of the firm until 1896, when he left for Europe. Prior to his departure, he acquired Barretto's shares in the company worth P42,000. After Barretto retired in May of the same year, Róxas, through his attorneys, acquired the rest of Barretto’s stake in the business. In 1895, San Miguel Beer won its first of many awards as a product of the highest quality at the Exposición Regional de Filipinas. By 1896, San Miguel Beer was outselling by more than five-to-one all imported beers in the country.

The 1900s ushered in a period of prosperity after the Philippine Revolution and the beginning of the American Occupation. Demand for beer increased, and for San Miguel, still under Róxas' leadership, modernization of their operations included installation of electric conveyors and automatic machines, with the brewery’s equipment modernised by 1910.

By 1913, imported beer represented only 12% of the total consumption in the Philippines; San Miguel held an 88% share of the industry. Róxas died in Paris, France in 1913. Soon after, Don Benito Legarda and Don Gonzalo Tuasón made it advisable to change the form of the company from a firm of co-participants to a corporation (San Miguel Brewery, Inc.). Róxas's son, Don Antonio Róxas y de Ayala, was appointed president, with Don Enrique Brías y de Coya and Don Ramón J. Fernández as managers.

By 1914, San Miguel began to export, with its products finding ready markets in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guam. When the First World War broke out, exports came to a temporary halt due to difficulties such as shortage of raw materials and the consequent rise in manufacturing costs. It was not until Prohibition was repealed in the United States that San Miguel was able to resume exports to Guam and later to Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. By the end of 1914, Don Enrique Brías y de Coya, after seeing that his efforts and industry had resulted in a progressive and prosperous business, retired from active business life in favour of his son, Don Antonio Brías y Róxas. In 1918, Don Antonio Róxas y de Ayala resigned from his position as president.

Andrés Soriano y Róxas (nephew of Don Antonio Róxas y de Ayala and grandson of Don Pedro Pablo Róxas) first joined San Miguel as a clerk in the accounting department. In 1918, after the resignation of Don Antonio Roxas y de Ayala, Don Ramón J. Fernández assumed the presidency and Soriano was made acting manager. In 1923, Soriano was appointed manager and together with Don Antonio Brías y Roxas managed the house of San Miguel with constantly increasing success.

Diversification into new lines of business began in the 1920s. The company opened in 1922 the Royal Soft Drinks Plant in Manila producing Royal Tru-Orange, other Royal products and aerated water. (In 1919, the company acquired the Oriental Brewery and Ice Company and transformed the building into an ice plant and cold storage; later the Royal Soft Drinks Plant.) Five years later, the plant started bottling Coca-Cola, after the company secured the rights to bottle and distribute the product in the Philippines. In 1925, San Miguel went into the ice cream business with the purchase of the Magnolia Plant on Calle Avilés which was transferred a year later to a new site on Calle Echague (now, C. Palanca Sr. Street) in Quiapo District, Manila. The new site used to house the Fábrica de Hielo de Manila which was bought by San Miguel in 1924. To achieve greater self-sufficiency in its operations, the firm opened a new plant in 1930 to produce carbon dioxide for its soft drinks products and dry ice for the refrigeration needs of its ice cream products. In 1932, a plant was set up to produce compressed yeast for bakeries and medical use. The following year, the company leased from the government the site for Insular Ice and Cold Storage for a period of ten years.

During the 1930s, San Miguel began investing in businesses overseas. The company set up a short lived dairy business in Calcutta, India and Singapore (Cold Storage Creameries, Singapore), and invested in breweries in the United States (a stake in the George Muehlebach Brewing Company and majority holdings in the Lone Star Brewing Company located in San Antonio, Texas).

In 1939, the management of the company was reorganized along the lines of American corporations. San Miguel's management team was made up of the board of directors (president, vice-president, treasurer and nine directors and the executive officers of the corporation). Don Ramón J. Fernández was elected president of the board of directors and Don Antonio Roxas y Gargollo, son of Don Antonio Roxas y de Ayala, was elected vice-president. Soriano was elected president of the corporation, with Don Antonio Brias y Roxas as vice president. Don Eduardo Roxas (another son of Don Antonio Róxas y de Ayala) and Don Jacobo Zóbel de Ayala y Róxas were appointed directors. Expanding and modernizing the company, however, meant diluting family control. San Miguel became the first Filipino company to be owned by thousands of shareholders. To retain control, Soriano relied on alliances with his Róxas relatives and associates.

Before World War II broke out, San Miguel built a glass factory in Paco and the Cebu Royal plant, its first installation outside Luzon. When the war reached the Philippines, Soriano was commissioned as a colonel and served as an aide to General Douglas MacArthur. One of the first Filipino brewmasters was Dominador San Diego Santos, a chemist from Obando, Bulacan.[4]

After the war, San Miguel rebuilt and mounted a large scale expansion program. The company acquired and modernized a second brewery in Polo, Bulacán (now part of Valenzuela City) in 1947. Two years later, five other plants were opened: the Manila glass plant in Farola, a carbon dioxide plant in Otis, a carton plant, the Iloílo Coca-Cola plant and the Farola power plant. Exports of San Miguel Pale Pilsen resumed. New soft drink plants followed in Davao and Naga.

In 1953, Soriano signed the "Manila Agreement" which allowed the Spanish beer brewing subsidiary La Segarra S.A. to brew and sell beer under the San Miguel brand. This company, renamed as San Miguel, FÃ¡bricas de Cerveza y Malta (now Mahou-San Miguel Group) in 1957, was a separate, independent company that had exclusive rights to use the San Miguel brand in Europe.[5]

In 1964, the company's name was changed to San Miguel Corporation and moved to a new head office along Ayala Avenue in Makati.

AndrÃ©s Soriano Sr. died on December 30, 1964. At the time of his death, Soriano had parlayed his family's vast San Miguel fortune into mining, dairies, factories, a newspaper and a radio station. He had investments in Philippine Airlines, held the largest Coca-Cola franchise, and owned five insurance agency distributorships, a Kansas City brewery that made Lone Star and Colt 45, gold mines in British East Africa and a development company in Spain.

Antonio Róxas was elected chairman of San Miguel and Andrés Soriano Jr. became president. Soriano was credited with instituting modern management, including decentralisation along product lines.

The Mandaue, Cebu complex was inaugurated in 1967 - its brewery and glass plant commenced operations a year later. Soriano Jr. continued to diversify the food business, building an ice cream plant in 1970 and expanding into poultry production in 1973 (it later added shrimp processing and freezing in 1984). By 1973, San Miguel sales exceeded a billion pesos for the first time and profits topped the hundred-million-peso mark.

A new corporate logo was adopted in 1975. The San Miguel escudo (seal), the symbol of the royal grant, was retained as the logo San Miguel Beer, its original grantee.

In the 1970s, then Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos imposed a tax on the production of coconuts, a major Philippine cash crop, with the proceeds supposed to fund that industry's development. It was alleged, however, that the money was funneled into United Coconut Planters Bank, controlled by Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., which Cojuangco then used much of the funds to help him purchase his controlling stake in San Miguel. The controlling interest carried nine of San Miguel's 15 directors seats with it.

San Miguel encountered its first major competitor in the beer market in 1982, when Asia Brewery, Inc. entered the segment. The rivalry between Asia Brewery and San Miguel came to a head in 1988, when Asia Brewery cannily introduced a bargain-priced brand called simply, "Beer" (also known as Beer Pale Pilsen and "Beer na Beer"). The product looked and tasted like San Miguel beer, playing upon the fact that in the Philippines, the San Miguel brand was synonymous with beer. It was a creative counter to San Miguel's notoriously aggressive and sometimes cutthroat competitive strategy, which had reportedly included "attempts to sabotage Asia Brewery's sales network and smash its empty bottles." Asia Brewery even hired away San Miguel's brewmaster.

At that time, the original brewery's buildings in San Miguel, Manila were demolished upon transfer of ownership to the Philippine Government as part of the Malacañang Palace grounds. The site became a park while some became part of the government complex (as the new executive building).

In 1983, San Miguel sold its remaining minority interest in the Spanish company (San Miguel, Fábricas de Cerveza y Malta, S.A.) The Philippine and Spanish companies have been operated independently of one another. San Miguel, Fábricas de Cerveza y Malta, S.A., however, still sported a logo similar to its Philippine counterpart. The Spanish company enjoyed success with San Miguel in its home market. Also, it was the number one Spanish beer exported throughout Europe. Consequently, well-travelled consumers easily confuse the two San Miguel beers, even though they are brewed by two different companies.[5]

Soriano Jr.'s administration also witnessed the battle for corporate control. A thorny issue of management transparency broke Soriano's longstanding alliance with his relatives in the Zóbel de Ayala family. The result was a historical corporate battle that resulted in the loss of effective control by both the Sorianos and Zóbels.

In 1983, Enrique Zóbel (a third cousin of Soriano Jr.), president of Ayala Corporation and was vice chairman of the San Miguel board, had instigated a takeover on his own. The seeds of the "family feud" lay in the refusal of the Soriano management to share corporate information with Zóbel, especially regarding contracts that SMC management was entering into with ANSCOR, a Soriano-owned company. Soriano Jr. viewed Zóbel as a competitor, while Zóbel (holding nearly 20% of SMC stake) viewed Soriano Jr. (with about 7%) as mismanaging the company and engaging in sweetheart deals. Unable to oust Soriano Jr., Zóbel sold his group's 19.5% stake to businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., an astute political adviser of then President Ferdinand Marcos. Cojuangco's Coconut Industry Investment Fund (a.k.a., United Coconut Planters Bank) accumulated an additional 31% of San Miguel, giving him effective control of San Miguel and leaving the Soriano family with a mere 3%. Funds used by Cojuangco to acquire Zóbel's stake came from levies imposed by the Marcos dictatorship on coconut farmers. The Supreme Court has declared such levies to be public funds and therefore any assets bought using these funds are owned by coconut farmers.

After Soriano Jr. died of cancer in March 19, 1984, Cojuangco scooped up the chairmanship of San Miguel in 1984. That same year, San Miguel moved to a new head office in Mandaluyong. Cojuangco brought coconut oil milling and refining operations into San Miguel's portfolio. His reign, however, was cut short when Marcos was toppled in 1986.

After the People Power Revolution in 1986, Corazón Aquino, Cojuangco's estranged cousin, became president of the Philippines. Aquino rode on the crest of widespread public outrage over the assassination of her husband, Benigno Aquino Jr., in 1983. One of the people blamed for her husband's death was Cojuangco, who fled on the same aircraft as Marcos to Hawaii in 1986. The Aquino administration sequestered Cojuangco's stake in San Miguel and agreed to let Soriano Jr.'s son, Andrés Soriano III, run the company, although the Soriano family's holdings had dwindled to a mere 1%.

Soriano III launched a campaign to reclaim the family legacy, but when he tried to buy back the abandoned shares, he was blocked by the Aquino administration's Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). The PCGG assumed control (but not legal ownership) of the 51.4-percent stake and refused to relinquish it. The government asserted that the stake had been illegally obtained. The PCGG continued to tend its San Miguel stake into the early 1990s, but it acceded de facto control of the conglomerate to Soriano III via a management contract with ANSCOR. Soriano III continued the company's program of expansion, acquiring majority control of La TondeÃ±a, Inc. (now, Ginebra San Miguel, Inc.), the leading producer of hard liquor in the Philippines, in 1987 and adding beef and pork production to the company's food operations (Monterey) in 1988.

Soriano III embarked on an ambitious internationalization program, hoping to expand into other countries and mitigate the effects of the Philippines' unstable economy. He also wanted to head off encroaching competition from the world's biggest breweries, namely Anheuser-Busch and Miller of the United States, Kirin of Japan, and BSN of France.

Soriano III allocated $1 billion to a five-year strategic internationalization program that focused on shaping up domestic operations, then progressing to licensing and exporting, overseas production, and finally to distribution of non-beer products.

A subsequent decentralisation created a holding company structure, with 18 non-beer operations positioned as subsidiaries. This corporate reorganization freed the spun off businesses from the bureaucratic shackles of a large conglomerate. In the course of this multifaceted effort to attain optimum efficiency, San Miguel reduced its workforce by more than 16 percent, from a 1989 high of 39,138 to 32,832 by 1993.

With its domestic "ducks in a row," San Miguel turned to the next stage in its internationalization, beer licensing and exporting initiative. Although the company had exported beer for most of its history, this effort was intensified dramatically in the late 1980s. San Miguel's beer exports grew by 150 percent from 1985 to 1989 alone, and the brand was soon exported to 24 countries, including all of Asia's key markets as well as the United States, Australia, and the Middle East.

Once the core brand was established in a particular market, San Miguel would begin to create production facilities, sometimes on an independent basis and sometimes in concert with an indigenous joint-venture partner. By 1995, San Miguel had manufacturing plants in Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and had licensing partners in Taiwan, Guam and Nepal.

Thus, in spite of the overarching quarrel regarding San Miguel's ownership (not to mention other problems endemic to operating in the Philippines), the company's sales quintupled from P12.23 billion in 1986 to P68.43 billion by 1994. Net income increased twice as fast, from P1.11 billion to P 11.86 billion over the same period, although San Miguel's overseas operations (as a whole) were not yet profitable.

In 1996 San Miguel purchased full control of its Hong Kong arm, San Miguel Brewery Hong Kong Ltd. In April of the following year, San Miguel's domestic soft-drink bottling unit, Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines, Inc., was merged into the Australia-based Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd. (CCA). In effect, San Miguel exchanged its 70-percent interest in a Philippine-only operation for a 25-percent stake in CCA, which had operations in 17 countries. CCA soon demerged the latter operations into a UK-based firm called Coca-Cola Beverages plc (resulting in a reduction of San Miguel's stake in CCA to 22 percent).

From 1995 through 1997, San Miguel suffered a downturn in its main domestic businesses, while overseas operations were still in the red. Profits plummeted. In response, a major restructuring of the company's loss-making food businesses was undertaken. San Miguel's Magnolia ice cream and milk business was merged with the Nestlé Philippines group, to form Magnolia-Nestlé Corporation. By late 1998, San Miguel's stake in this business was acquired by Nestlé. San Miguel also exited from the ready-to-eat meal sector and curtailed the operations of its shrimp farming business. By late 1997, the company was also beginning to feel the effects of the Asian economic crisis.

Andrés Soriano III resigned in July 1998 and Eduardo M. Cojuangco Jr. was elected chairman of San Miguel Corporation. Francisco C. Eizmendi Jr. stayed as president and Ramón S. Ang was elected vice-chairman in January 1999. Ang would later be appointed president and chief operating officer following the retirement of Eizmendi in 2002.

Confronted by greater competitive pressures as a result of the 1997 financial crisis, the pace of change quickened for San Miguel upon Cojuangco's return. Amid an extremely difficult operating environment, working toward configuring the corporation to have better response to the highly competitive climate of the time. The immediate goals upon assuming leadership was to ease the burden of the spiraling interest expense, pursue new strategic alliances to strengthen the business—particularly in the international arena—and strengthen its profitability and financial standing to position the company for new opportunities. Progress was made on reducing costs, improving productivity and generating cash flow.

Having installed a critical mass of brewing capacity in China, Indonesia and Vietnam, the new management decided to continue the companyâ€™s investments in these areas, aggressively focusing on brand and volume building initiatives, most especially in China. San Miguel revamped the selling and distribution organization resulting in higher distribution efficiency, improved coverage of key accounts, greater pricing stability and reduced overall costs. In China, the company chose to focus on growth markets while still reaching close to 30 cities. Where in the past, it had primarily concentrated on the premium market it then aggressively pushed its medium and low-end brands.

By the end of 1998, shuffling assets to find the ideal portfolio and looking to restructure our operations and focus on our core competencies, Cojuangco sold San Miguel's stake in Coca-Cola Beverages, Coca-Cola Amatil’s bottler in Europe, along with SMC's 45% stake in Nestlé Philippines. The sale of both Coca-Cola Beverages and Nestle was part of the new management’s effort to restructure the San Miguel Group and focus its technological, managerial and financial strengths to ventures where it believed it could add the most value. A number of management changes were made in conjunction with a rightsizing program.

Management layers were flattened to restore the company to fighting trim. In May, the San Miguel Brewing International (SMBIL) regional headquarters was transferred from Hong Kong to Manila and to reduce overhead expenses, the employees of SMBIL were repatriated. The organisational streamlining was meant to configure San Miguel to enable it to better respond to the competitive climate. The goal was to speed up decision-making and have a flatter and more dynamic organisation, one that was more efficient and more responsive to the market. The group-wide logistics and purchasing functions were realigned at the corporate level. The food, liquor and international operations were recapitalized. Metro Bottled Water Corporation, manufacturers of Wilkins Distilled Water, was acquired. In February 2001, San Miguel once again regained control of Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines, Inc. Shortly after, San Miguel acquired Pure Foods Corporation, becoming the undisputed market leader in the Philippinesâ€™ fast growing food industry, owning two-thirds of the refrigerated/processed meat market, and over a third of the poultry and feeds industries.

Cojuangco and Ang have also been on an international shopping spree. For the next three years, San Miguel has bought six companies in four nearby countries. Its first major acquisition was Australian boutique brewer J. Boag and Son for A$96 million in 2000. To shore up its war chest, San Miguel took in Japanese brewer Kirin Brewery Co. Ltd., which acquired a 15-percent stake in San Miguel, for $540 million in 2002. San Miguel continued its international acquisitions, paying $97 million for Thai Amarit Brewery Ltd. and $35.5 million for food processor TTC (Vietnam) Co. in 2003. In 2004,it bought 51 percent of Berri Ltd., Australia's top juicemaker, for $97.9 million. By 2004, international sales comprised 13 percent of total revenues from 10 percent the previous year. In 2005, the company made its biggest overseas acquisition with the takeover of National Foods Ltd., Australia's largest publicly traded dairy, which it bought for P80.38 billion. That was followed later in the year with its $420-million purchase of Singapore-based Del Monte Pacific Ltd., the region's largest pineapple canner. San Miguel merged National Foods' operation with Berri.

In 2006, San Miguel has sold its 65% stake at Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines, Inc. (including its subsidiaries Cosmos Bottling and Philippine Beverage Partners) to The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) for $590 million. In November 2007, SMC sold Boag's to Lion Nathan for A$325 million. The same month, SMC also sold National Foods to Kirin for Â¥294 billion.[6]

While the global financial meltdown of 2008-2009 sent many companies into full retreat, San Miguel Corporation powered ahead, investing mightily in a strategy to reaccelerate growth and improve margins.

In April 2012, SMC bought a 49% minority stake in Philippine Airlines (PAL) Holdings, worth US$500 million, to revitalize PAL and Air Philippines.[7] On September 15, 2014, SMC sold its stake in PAL holdings for approximately $1.3 billion and relinquished management control back to the group of Lucio Tan.[1][2][3]

SMC has also expanded its oil and energy business with the purchase of Esso Malaysia Berhad (65%), ExxonMobil Borneo Sdn Bhd (100%) and ExxonMobil Malaysia Sdn Bhd (100%) for US$577.3 million.[8]

In October 2012, SMC bought out the 24% of its shares from the government through Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) companies by paying CIIF P57.6 billion.[9]

By 2017, Iñigo Zóbel, son of Enrique Zóbel, became the largest common stock shareholder of SMC owning 66.1% through his holding company, Top Frontier Investment Holdings, Inc.[10]

In separate statements on May 30, 2016, Globe Telecom and PLDT will each acquire half of Vega Telecom from SMC for P69.1 billion. The acquisition entails P52.08 billion for 100% equity interest in Vega Telecom and the assumption of around P17.02 billion of liabilities.[11] [12][13]

San Miguel shares are also involved in the controversial Coco Levy Case (Sandiganbayan Civil Case No. 33), which is actually subdivided into a total of eight cases involving different parties and properties. Arguably the most important case is Case No. 33-F, which involves 51% of the shares of San Miguel. This majority stake at San Miguel has been further subdivided into three separate litigations, each of which reaching the Supreme Court in highly contentious proceedings.

The first case involved 4% of San Miguel shares, which, in the case of San Miguel Corporation vs. Sandiganbayan,[14] was awarded by the Supreme Court to the government. The second case, Republic of the Philippines vs. Sandiganbayan and Eduardo Cojuangco Jr.,[15] involved a 20% block that the Supreme Court, voting 7-4, awarded to Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco. The most recent High Court pronouncement came early this year, Philippine Coconut Producers Federation, Inc. (COCOFED) vs. Republic of the Philippines,[16] where the Court, voting 11-0, declared that the remaining 27% of San Miguel is owned by the government.[17] (Note: The 27% had been diluted to 24% due the government’s failure to subscribe to the increased authorized capital stock of San Miguel)

San Miguel Brewery Inc. is the Philippines' largest brewer and a leading brand in Hong Kong and South China. San Miguel Beer is one of the worldâ€™s top-selling beers. Its portfolio of beer products also includes San Miguel All Premium Malt, San Miguel Super Dry, San Mig Light, San Mig Strong Ice, Red Horse Extra Strong Beer, Gold Eagle, San Miguel Draft and Cerveza Negra.

Ginebra San Miguel Inc. (PSE: GSMI) was incorporated in 1902 by Carlos Palanca Sr. as La Tondeña, Inc. In 1987, SMC acquired a 70% stake in the company and renamed as La Tondeña Distillers Inc. The company’s name was changed to Ginebra San Miguel, Inc. and became a publicly listed corporation. As of 2012, Ginebra San Miguel, became the largest-selling gin in the world, with sales of 23.8 million 9-litre cases, according to Drinks International.[18]

San Miguel Pure Foods Company, Inc. (PSE:Â PF) is the largest food company in the Philippines, with nearly 3,000 employees deployed in a nationwide network of offices, farms, manufacturing, processing and distribution facilities. The company was incorporated in 1956 as Pure Foods Corporation, a manufacturer of processed meats marketed under the Purefoods brand name. In 2001, SMC acquired Pure Foods Corporation from Ayala Corporation and renamed as San Miguel Pure Foods Company, Inc. The entire food division of SMC was consolidated under San Miguel Pure Foods Company, Inc. corporate umbrella. Its integrated operations range from breeding, contract growing, processing and marketing of chicken, pork and beef to the manufacture of refrigerated, canned and ready-to-cook meat products, ice cream, butter, cheese, margarine, oils and fats, as well as animal and aquatic feeds. It holds in its portfolio some of the most formidable brands in the Philippine food industry, among them, Magnolia, Purefoods, Monterey, Star and Dari Creme. Its B-Meg and Pure Blend brands are market-leaders in the animal feeds industry. Sixty per cent of sales for San Miguel Pure Foods comes from poultry, feeds and meats; branded businesses, processed meats, coffee and dairy; and flour. As of 16 July 2013, San Miguel Pure Foods has a market share of over 40 per cent, and is the Philippines' leading poultry producer.[19]

San Miguel Yamamura Packaging Corporation (SMYPC) produce packaging formats, servicing many leading food, pharmaceutical, chemical and personal care manufacturers. The company serves clients in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia among other foreign markets. SMYPC also manufactures corrugated cartons, flexible packaging, plastic crates and pallets, metal closures and two-piece aluminum cans. In China, the company produces glass containers and plastic crates, pallets and metal crowns for the domestic and export markets. SMYPC also manages a plastic crate plant in Indonesia and a glass and metal crown facility in Vietnam. In Malaysia, SMYPC operates four facilities that produce flexible packaging, plastic films, woven products and radiant barriers for higher-value and high-tech industries such as electronics, health care and logistics firms.

San Miguel Properties, Inc. was established in 1990 as SMC’s corporate real estate arm, its current projects include mixed-use developments, with economy to middle-income housing as its core products. Among its real estate development projects: Bel Aldea, Maravilla, and Muralla in Cavite and Wedgewoods in Sta. Rosa Laguna. In the works is San Francisco Laketown, a development project in Cavite. San Miguel Properties’ has also launched the Monte Maria project, a Catholic pilgrimage site situated in Alfonso, Cavite.

SMC has long been involved in commercial basketball in the Philippines beginning with the Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Association (MICAA) founded in 1938, where SMC organized its first basketball team, playing under the name San Miguel Brewery. After the company changed its name to San Miguel Corporation, the team’s name was changed to San Miguel Corporation Braves (or the San Miguel Braves). SMC remained with the MICAA until the league’s dissolution in 1982.

In 1975, SMC organized its second basketball team, when the company became a founding member of the Philippine Basketball Association, the first professional basketball league in Asia. The team is currently playing as the San Miguel Beermen and is currently the PBA franchise with the most number of championships (23).

SMC currently owns two more PBA teams, Barangay Ginebra San Miguel and the Purefoods Star Hotshots, as a result of corporate acquisitions.

After the dissolution of the MICAA in 1983, the Philippine Amateur Basketball League (PABL) – later renamed Philippine Basketball League (PBL) – was formed in 1983 to take its place as the major amateur basketball league in the Philippines. SMC was one of the league's founding members and remained until the league became dormant in 2010. Its PABL/PBL franchise won a total of nine championships.

SMC also participated in the ASEAN Basketball League, playing as the San Miguel Beermen (ABL) from 2011 to 2013, winning one ABL championship.


who died during the filming of flight of the phoenix

Albert Paul Mantz (August 2, 1903 â€“ July 8, 1965), known as Paul Mantz, was a noted air racing pilot, movie stunt pilot and consultant from the late 1930s until his death in the mid-1960s. He gained fame on two stages: Hollywood and in air races.

Paul Mantz

Paul Mantz (the name he used throughout his life) was born in Alameda, California, the son of a school principal, and was raised in nearby Redwood City, California. He developed his interest in flying at an early age; as a young boy, his first flight on fabricated canvas wings was aborted when his mother stopped him as he tried to launch off the branch of a tree in his yard. In 1915, at age 12, he attended the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and witnessed the world-famous Lincoln Beachey make his first ever flight in his new monoplane, the Lincoln Beachey Special.[citation needed]

Mantz took his first flying lesson at age 16 using money that he made from driving a hearse during the influenza epidemic of 1919. Although he had accumulated hours towards his private pilot certificate, Mantz quit flying altogether when he witnessed the death of his instructor.[1]

On September 24, 1924, Mantz became a part of a famous aviation event when he lent his car battery to the Douglas World Cruiser that had "dead-sticked" into a field on its way to San Francisco for a celebration of the world flight. He was invited to join the festivities at Crissy Field where many noted military aviators tried to persuade him to pursue a career in military flying.[citation needed]

Mantz applied for admission to the United States Army flight school at March Field, California but was told he needed at least two years of college to be eligible. Apparently resorting to a ruse involving Stanford University stationery, he managed to gain admission with false documents and became a successful cadet. He also conveniently did not tell officials about his prior flying experience.[2]

In 1927, shortly before his graduation at March Field, Mantz was flying solo over the Coachella Valley when he spotted a train heading west over the empty desert floor up the long grade from Indio. He rolled over into a dive, leveled off a few feet above the track and flew head-on towards the train as the engineer repeatedly sounded the whistle. At the last moment Mantz pulled up, did a "victory roll" and flew away.[2] This sort of dangerous stunt was fairly common during the early era of loosely regulated flying in the 1920s but the train's passengers included ranking officers coming to March Field to participate in the graduation ceremonies and Mantz was subsequently dismissed from the army. His instructor reportedly made it clear to him that he had the makings of an exceptional pilot and encouraged him to continue a career in aviation.

After working briefly in commercial aviation, Mantz went to Hollywood, attracted by the large sums of money movie stunt pilots were making at the time. A main requirement was Associated Motion Picture Pilots (AMPP) membership but that was only gained after employment in the industry. In an effort to gain notoriety, on July 6, 1930 Mantz set a record in flying 46 consecutive outside loops as a part of the dedication ceremonies of the San Mateo airport.[3] Although he gained recognition as an accomplished pilot, without the AMPP card, he still could not work in Hollywood. However, in 1931, Mantz performed the climactic stunt in The Galloping Ghost which required him to fly down a canyon and just miss a prominent sycamore. Misjudging his approach, Mantz crashed into the tree but the film crew got their shot and he got his AMPP card.[4]

Howard Hughes was among his first clients. After much difficulty finding steady stunt work, he accepted a particularly risky assignment, flying a Curtis-Wright CW-16K through a hangar with less than five feet of clearance off each wingtip for the 1932 film Air Mail. Mantz reportedly treated the challenge as an issue of thorough planning, which set him apart from most of the pilots then flying stunts for the movies.

Air Mail was a hit and as word spread about his success in getting through the hangar unscathed, Mantz found more work and his professional ideas about stunt flying were gradually accepted by the studios. United Air Services, Paul's fledgling company at United Airport in Burbank, offered readily-available aircraft and pilots, standard rates and insurance to protect producers from the financial risks of accidents and downtime. Mantz's company grew steadily along with the public's fascination for flying as the studios made increasing numbers of aviation related films. His Paul Mantz Air Services air charter company (jokingly christened the Honeymoon Express[5]) also flourished and became a favorite among Hollywood stars, many of whom, such as Clark Gable and James Cagney became friends. One of his helicopters appears in the Errol Flynn factual short film, Cruise of the Zaca (1952), as featured on the 2 disc Special Edition DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

During this period, Mantz carried out a number of "mercy" flights including transporting a deep sea diver to the Mare Island Navy Yard where a decompression chamber was able to save his life, flying 15 Mexican fishermen to safety after their boat began to break up and assisting 53 trapped firefighters in the Santa Barbara mountain area by dropping supplies. Mantz had to fly low through an inferno in order to make the drop.[6] After Tom Mix's accident and death, Mantz was also chosen to fly the body of Mix home.[7]

In 1937, a few months before she vanished over the western Pacific Ocean, acting as a technical advisor, Mantz tutored Amelia Earhart in long-distance flying and navigation (and had accompanied her as a co-pilot on the aborted first attempt of her world flight).

Air racing also became a passion for Mantz in the late-1930s. He entered his Lockheed Orion in the Bendix Trophy transcontinental dash from Los Angeles to Cleveland, placing third in 1938 and 1939.

On July 4, 1938, Mantz flew from Wichita to Burbank, California, accompanied by Paramount press agent, pilot, and pulp writer, Edward Churchill, in an attempt to break the speed-dash record. The stunt was part of the promotion for the film Men With Wings. The flight ran into several difficulties. The motor overheated over the Grand Canyon. When they reached Burbank, the landing gear jammed and it took 30 minutes to work it loose, while thousands of spectators looked from the ground and the fuel ran perilously low. Churchill was stricken with carbon monoxide poisoning and had to be treated by a physician after landing.

During World War II, Mantz enlisted and was commissioned a major (later promoted to lieutenant colonel), serving in the First Motion Picture Unit (FMPU) in California. Following an August 1944 honorable discharge, Mantz purchased a fleet of 475 wartime surplus bombers and fighters (including North American P-51 Mustang fighters) for $55,000 to use in film work. Mantz joked that he had the sixth-largest air force in the world, and sold the fleet's onboard fuel for a profit on his initial investment.[8] Retaining only 12 aircraft, the remainder of his "air force" was sold off as "scrap" at a handsome profit.[9]

With his film fleet in place, Mantz chose one of the P-51 fighters to convert it into a Bendix Trophy racer. With his longtime mechanic, Cort Johnson, he totally rebuilt the P-51C, stripping out all military issue equipment and modifying the wings with "wet" fuel cells. In the 1946 Bendix Trophy race, all the competitors flew similar converted warbirds but Mantz prevailed with an average speed of 435 mph. He went on to win the Bendix for an unprecedented three consecutive years (1946–1948) with over $125,000.00 in winnings.[10]

In 1945, Mantz flew a P-40 and directed aerial sequences in God is My Co-Pilot. Mantz piloted a Boeing B-17 for the belly landing scenes in Twelve O'Clock High and the footage was reused in several other movies.[11] His longest single flying assignment was in the late 1950s, for the TV series Sky King.

Mantz piloted a converted B-25 bomber to film footage for Cinerama travelogues. According to an interview in the documentary Cinerama Adventure with Mantz's cameraman, in one instance, Mantz flew through an active volcano and narrowly escaped crashing into the mouth of the volcano when the engines died due to oxygen starvation. Mantz's B-25 was outfitted with a refrigerator and other amenities for comfort as he used it for world travel on film assignments.

Mantz used his B-25 to film Cinerama sequences of military aircraft at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in October and November 1956, for the Lowell Thomas production, Search for Paradise, released in 1957.[12]

In 1961, aged 58, Mantz formed Tallmantz Aviation with pilot Frank Tallman, supplying aircraft along with their personal stunt flying services to movie and television productions.

In 1932, Mantz married Myrtle "Red" Harvey, one of his former flying students, but divorced in 1935.[13] He remarried two years later to Theresa "Terry" Mae Minor and had a son, Paul, Jr., with his second wife. Her two children by a previous marriage to Roy T. Minor (1904 - 1935), Roy, Jr. and Nita Lou "Tenita", lived with the family but were never legally adopted. The Mantz family lived on Balboa Island, off Newport Beach, California, where Mantz had a yacht. After years of successful ventures in both air racing and movie work, he had accumulated more than $10 million in profits, and by 1965, was planning his retirement.[14] When his partner, Frank Tallman, broke his leg in a freak accident, Mantz stepped in to finish the aerial scenes for one last movie project.[15]

Mantz died on July 8, 1965 while working on the movie The Flight of the Phoenix, produced and directed by Robert Aldrich. Flying a very unusual aircraft, the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 built especially for the film, Mantz struck a small hillock while skimming over a desert site in Arizona for a second take. As Mantz attempted to recover by opening the throttle to its maximum, the over-stressed aircraft broke in two and nosed over into the ground, killing Mantz instantly.[16] Bobby Rose, a stuntman standing behind Mantz in the cockpit and representing a character played by Hardy Krüger, was seriously injured.

The FAA investigation noted Mantz's alcohol consumption before the flight and said the resulting impairment to his "efficiency and judgment" contributed to the accident. Thirteen years later his business partner, Frank Tallman, also died in an aviation mishap.

Some who were with Mantz during the shoot dispute that he was flying under the influence, although they acknowledge he was drinking alcohol the night before the fatal flight. Toxicology tests were performed several hours after the accident; in the absence of refrigeration, normal postmortem biochemical processes might produce blood ethanol and cause or contribute to an elevated BAC level.[17]

The final credits of The Flight of the Phoenix bear a tribute to Paul Mantz: "It should be remembered...that Paul Mantz, a fine man and a brilliant flyer gave his life in the making of this film..."[18]

I'm not a stunt pilot. I'm a precision pilot.

In the 1988 TV movie Pancho Barnes, Mantz was portrayed by Kurt Rhoads. In Amelia Earhart, a 1976 miniseries, he was played by Stephen Macht.


which flag is canada's official royal flag

The flag of Canada, often referred to as the Canadian flag, or unofficially as the Maple Leaf and l'UnifoliÃ© (French for "the one-leafed"), is a national flag consisting of a red field with a white square at its centre in the ratio of 1:2:1, in the middle of which is featured a stylized, red, 11-pointed maple leaf charged in the centre.[3] It is the first specified by law for use as the country's national flag.

Flag of Canada

In 1964, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson formed a committee to resolve the ongoing issue of the lack of an official Canadian flag, sparking a serious debate about a flag change to replace the Union Flag. Out of three choices, the maple leaf design by George Stanley,[4] based on the flag of the Royal Military College of Canada, was selected. The flag made its first official appearance on February 15, 1965; the date is now celebrated annually as National Flag of Canada Day.

The Canadian Red Ensign was unofficially used since the 1890s and approved by a 1945 Order in Council for use "wherever place or occasion may make it desirable to fly a distinctive Canadian flag".[5][6] Also, the Royal Union Flag remains an official flag in Canada. There is no law dictating how the national flag is to be treated, but there are conventions and protocols to guide how it is to be displayed and its place in the order of precedence of flags, which gives it primacy over the aforementioned and most other flags.

Many different flags created for use by Canadian officials, government bodies, and military forces contain the maple leaf motif in some fashion, either by having the Canadian flag charged in the canton, or by including maple leaves in the design.

The flag is horizontally symmetric and therefore the obverse and reverse sides appear identical. The width of the Maple Leaf flag is twice the height. The white field is a Canadian pale (a square central band in a vertical triband flag, named after this flag); each bordering red field is exactly half its size[7] and it bears a stylized red maple leaf at its centre. In heraldic terminology, the flag's blazon as outlined on the original royal proclamation is "gules on a Canadian pale argent a maple leaf of the first".[8][10]

The maple leaf has been used as a Canadian emblem since the 18th century.[11]  It was first used as a national symbol in  1868 when it appeared  on the coat of arms of both Ontario and Quebec.[12] In 1867, Alexander Muir composed the patriotic song "The Maple Leaf Forever", which became an unofficial anthem in English-speaking Canada.[13] The maple leaf was later  added to the Canadian coat of arms in 1921.[12] From 1876 until 1901, the leaf appeared on all Canadian coins and remained on the penny after 1901.[14] The use of the maple leaf by the Royal Canadian Regiment as a regimental symbol extended back to 1860.[15] During the First World War and Second World War, badges of the Canadian Forces were often based on a maple leaf design.[16] The maple leaf would eventually adorn the tombstones of Canadian military graves.[17]

By proclaiming the Royal Arms of Canada, King George V in 1921 made red and white the official colours of Canada; the former came from Saint George's Cross and the latter from the French royal emblem since King Charles VII.[18] These colours became "entrenched" as the national colours of Canada upon the proclamation of the Royal Standard of Canada (the Canadian monarch's personal flag) in 1962.[19] The Department of Canadian Heritage has listed the various colour shades for printing ink that should be used when reproducing the Canadian flag; these include:[7]

The number of points on the leaf has no special significance;[20] the number and arrangement of the points were chosen after wind tunnel tests showed the current design to be the least blurry of the various designs when tested under high wind conditions.[21]

The image of the maple leaf used on the flag was designed by Jacques Saint-Cyr;[22] Jack Cook claims that this stylized eleven-point maple leaf was lifted from a copyrighted design owned by a Canadian craft shop in Ottawa.[23] The colours 0/100/100/0 in the CMYK process, PMS 032 (flag red 100%), or PMS 485 (used for screens) in the Pantone colour specifier can be used when reproducing the flag.[7] For the Federal Identity Program, the red tone of the standard flag has an RGB value of 255–0–0 (web hexadecimal #FF0000).[24] In 1984, the National Flag of Canada Manufacturing Standards Act was passed to unify the manufacturing standards for flags used in both indoor and outdoor conditions.[25]

The first flag known to have flown in Canada was the St George's Cross carried by John Cabot when he reached Newfoundland in 1497. In 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in Gaspé bearing the French royal coat of arms with the fleurs-de-lis. His ship flew a red flag with a white cross, the French naval flag at the time. New France continued to fly the evolving French military flags of that period.[6][27] As the de jure national flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Flag (commonly known as the Union Jack and, by law, called the Royal Union Flag in Canada since 1964) was used similarly in Canada since the 1621 British settlement in Nova Scotia. Its use continued after Canada's independence from the United Kingdom in 1931 until the adoption of the current flag in 1965.[6]

Shortly after Canadian Confederation in 1867, the need for distinctive Canadian flags emerged. The first Canadian flag was that then used as the flag of the Governor General of Canada, a Union Flag with a shield in the centre bearing the quartered arms of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick surrounded by a wreath of maple leaves.[28] In 1870 the Red Ensign, with the addition of the Canadian composite shield in the fly, began to be used unofficially on land and sea[29] and was known as the Canadian Red Ensign. As new provinces joined the Confederation, their arms were added to the shield. In 1892, the British admiralty approved the use of the Red Ensign for Canadian use at sea.[29] The composite shield was replaced with the coat of arms of Canada upon its grant in 1921 and, in 1924, an Order in Council approved its use for Canadian government buildings abroad.[6] In 1925, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King established a committee to design a flag to be used at home, but it was dissolved before the final report could be delivered. Despite the failure of the committee to solve the issue, public sentiment in the 1920s was in favour of fixing the flag problem for Canada.[30] New designs were proposed in 1927,[31] 1931,[32] and 1939.[33]

During the Second World War, the Red Ensign was the recognized Canadian national flag. A joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons was appointed on November 8, 1945, to recommend a national flag to officially adopt. It received 2,409 designs from the public and was addressed by the director of the Historical Section of the Canadian Army, Fortescue Duguid, who pointed out red and white were Canada's official colours and there was already an emblem representing the country: three joined maple leaves seen on the escutcheon of the Canadian coat of arms.[29] By May 9 the following year, the committee reported back with a recommendation "that the national flag of Canada should be the Canadian red ensign with a maple leaf in autumn golden colours in a bordered background of white". The Legislative Assembly of Quebec had urged the committee to not include any of what it deemed as "foreign symbols", including the Union Flag, and Mackenzie King, then still prime minister, declined to act on the report, leaving the order to fly the Canadian Red Ensign in place.[18][28][34]

By the 1960s, debate for an official Canadian flag intensified and became a subject of controversy, culminating in the Great Flag Debate of 1964.[35] In 1963, the minority Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson gained power and decided to adopt an official Canadian flag through parliamentary debate. The principal political proponent of the change was Pearson. He had been a significant broker during the Suez Crisis of 1956, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[36] During the crisis, Pearson was disturbed when the Egyptian government objected to Canadian peacekeeping forces on the grounds that the Canadian flag (the Red Ensign) contained the same symbol (the Union Flag) also used as a flag by the United Kingdom, one of the belligerents.[36] Pearson's goal was for the Canadian flag to be distinctive and unmistakably Canadian. The main opponent to changing the flag was the leader of the opposition and former prime minister, John Diefenbaker, who eventually made the subject a personal crusade.[37]

In 1961, Leader of the Opposition Lester Pearson asked John Ross Matheson to begin researching what it would take for Canada to have a new flag. Pearson knew the Red Ensign with the Union Jack was unpopular in Quebec, a base of support for his Liberal Party, but strongly favoured by English Canada. By April 1963, Pearson was prime minister in a minority government and risked losing power over the issue. He formed a 15-member multi-party parliamentary committee in 1963 to select a new design, despite opposition leader Diefenbaker's demands for a referendum on the issue.[38] On May 27, 1964, Pearson's cabinet introduced a motion to parliament for adoption of his favourite design, presented to him by artist and heraldic advisor Alan Beddoe,[29] of a "sea to sea" (Canada's motto) flag with blue borders and three conjoined red maple leaves on a white field. This motion led to weeks of acrimonious debate in the House of Commons and the design came to be known as the "Pearson Pennant",[39] derided by the media and viewed as a "concession to QuÃ©bec".[29]

A new all-party committee was formed in September 1964, comprising seven Liberals, five Conservatives, one New Democrat, one Social Crediter, and one Créditiste, with Herman Batten as chairman, while John Matheson acted as Pearson's right-hand man.[29] Among those who gave their opinions to the group were Duguid, expressing the same views as he had in 1945, insisting on a design using three maple leaves; Arthur R. M. Lower, stressing the need for a distinctly Canadian emblem; Marcel Trudel, arguing for symbols of Canada's founding nations, which did not include the maple leaf (a thought shared by Diefenbaker); and A. Y. Jackson, providing his own suggested designs.[29] A steering committee also considered about 2,000 suggestions from the public, in addition to 3,900 others that included, according to Library and Archives Canada, "those that had accumulated in the Department of the Secretary of State and those from a parliamentary flag committee of 1945–1946".[29] Through a six-week period of study with political manoeuvring, the committee took a vote on the two finalists: the Pearson Pennant (Beddoe's design) and the current design. Believing the Liberal members would vote for the Prime Minister's preference, the Conservatives voted for the single leaf design. The Liberals, though, all voted for the same, giving a unanimous, 14 to 0 vote[29] for the option created by George Stanley and inspired by the flag of the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario.[40]

There, near the parade square, in March 1964, while viewing the college flag atop the Mackenzie Building, Stanley, then RMC's Dean of Arts, first suggested to Matheson, then Member of Parliament for Leeds, that the RMC flag should form the basis of the national flag. The suggestion was followed by Stanley's memorandum of March 23, 1964, on the history of Canada's emblems,[41] in which he warned that any new flag "must avoid the use of national or racial symbols that are of a divisive nature" and that it would be "clearly inadvisable" to create a flag that carried the Union Jack or a fleur-de-lis. According to Matheson, Pearson's one "paramount and desperate objective" in introducing the new flag was to keep Quebec in the Canadian union.[42] It was Dr. Stanley's idea that the new flag should be red and white and that it should feature the single maple leaf; his memorandum included the first sketch of what would become the flag of Canada. Stanley and Matheson collaborated on a design that was ultimately, after six months of debate and 308 speeches,[29] passed by a majority vote in the House of Commons on December 15, 1964. Just after this, at 2:00 am, Matheson wrote to Stanley: "Your proposed flag has just now been approved by the Commons 163 to 78. Congratulations. I believe it is an excellent flag that will serve Canada well."[43] The Senate added its approval two days later.[18]

Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, proclaimed the new flag on January 28, 1965,[18] and it was inaugurated on February 15 of the same year at an official ceremony held on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, in the presence of Governor General Major-General Georges Vanier, the Prime Minister, other members of the Cabinet, and Canadian parliamentarians. The Red Ensign was lowered at the stroke of noon and the new maple leaf flag was raised. The crowd sang "O Canada" followed by "God Save the Queen".[44] Of the flag, Vanier said "[it] will symbolize to each of us—and to the world—the unity of purpose and high resolve to which destiny beckons us".[45] Maurice Bourget, Speaker of the Senate, said: "The flag is the symbol of the nation's unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief, or opinion."[44]  Yet there was still opposition to the change, and Stanley's life was even threatened for having "assassinated the flag".  In spite of this, Stanley attended the flag raising ceremony.[46]

At the time of the 50th anniversary of the flag, the government—held by the Conservative Party—was criticized for the lack of official ceremony dedicated to the date; accusations of partisanship were levelled.[45] Minister of Canadian Heritage Shelly Glover denied the charges and others, including Liberal Members of Parliament, pointed to community events taking place around the country.[45] Governor General David Johnston did, though, preside at an official ceremony at Confederation Park in Ottawa, integrated with Winterlude. He said "[t]he National Flag of Canada is so embedded in our national life and so emblematic of our national purpose that we simply cannot imagine our country without it."[47] Queen Elizabeth II stated: "On this, the 50th anniversary of the National Flag of Canada, I am pleased to join with all Canadians in the celebration of this unique and cherished symbol of our country and identity."[48] A commemorative stamp and coin were issued by Canada Post and the Royal Canadian Mint, respectively.[47]

The Flag of Canada is represented as the Unicode emoji sequence U+1F1E8 ðŸ‡¨ REGIONAL INDICATOR C, U+1F1E6 ðŸ‡¦ REGIONAL INDICATOR A.[49]

Flag on John Cabot's ship, and used during the English colonization of the Americas before the Act of Union (1497-1707)

Flag used during the Scottish colonization of the Americas before the Act of Union (1621-1707)

Flag of France at time of Jacques Cartier (1534â€“1604)

Merchant Flag used by Champlain and French merchants (1604â€“1663)

New France Flag (1663â€“1763)

The Great Britain Union Flag (1763â€“1801)

The United Kingdom Union Flag (1801–1964) and the Canadian Royal Union Flag (1964–present)

Flag used (1868â€“1921)

1907 Canadian Red Ensign commonly used in western Canada. Note the inclusion of all the provincial emblems.

Flag used (1921â€“1957)

1957 version of the Canadian Red Ensign that had evolved as the de facto national flag until 1965

First flag proposal to Parliament; the Pearson Pennant

Flag of the Royal Military College of Canada; used as inspiration by George F.G. Stanley

Earlier (1964) version of the proposal that was adopted

Current flag, (1965â€“present)

Current flag, using Pantone specifications.

After the resolutions proposing a new national flag for Canada were passed by the two houses of parliament, a proclamation was drawn up for signature by the Canadian queen. This was created in the form of an illuminated document on vellum, with calligraphy by Yvonne Diceman and heraldic illustrations. The text was rendered in black ink, using a quill, while the heraldic elements were painted in gouache with gilt highlights. The Great Seal of Canada was embossed and secured by a silk ribbon.[50]

This parchment was signed discreetly by the calligrapher, but was made official by the signatures of Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Lester Pearson, and Attorney General Guy Favreau. In order to obtain these signatures, the document was flown to the United Kingdom (for the Queen's royal sign-manual) and to the Caribbean (for the signature of Favreau, who was on vacation). This transport to different climates, combined with the quality of the materials with which the proclamation was created, and the subsequent storage and repair methods (including the use of Scotch Tape) contributed to the deterioration of the document: The gouache was flaking off, leaving gaps in the heraldic designs, most conspicuously on the red maple leaf of the flag design in the centre of the sheet, and the adhesive from the tape had left stains. A desire to have the proclamation as part of a display at the Canadian Museum of Civilization marking the flag's 25th anniversary led to its restoration in 1989. The proclamation is today stored in a temperature and humidity controlled, plexiglass case, so as to prevent the vellum from changing dimensionally.[50]

As a symbol of the nation's membership in the Commonwealth of Nations, the Royal Union Flag is an official Canadian flag and is flown on certain occasions.[51] Regulations require federal installations to fly the Royal Union Flag beside the national flag when physically possible, using a second flagpole, on the following days: Commonwealth Day (the second Monday in March), Victoria Day (the same date as the Canadian sovereign's official birthday), and the anniversary of the Statute of Westminster (December 11). The Royal Union Flag can also be flown at the National War Memorial or at other locations during ceremonies that honour Canadian involvement with forces of other Commonwealth nations during times of war. The national flag always precedes the Royal Union Flag, with the former occupying the place of honour.[51] The Royal Union Flag is also part of the provincial flags of Ontario and Manitoba, forming the canton of these flags; a stylized version is used on the flag of British Columbia and the flag of Newfoundland and Labrador.[51] Several of the provincial lieutenant governors formerly used a modified union flag as their personal standard, but the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia is the only one who retains this design.[51] The Royal Union Flag and Red Ensign are still flown in Canada by veterans' groups and others who continue to stress the importance of Canada's British heritage and the Commonwealth connection.[51]

The Red Ensign is occasionally still used as well, including official use at some ceremonies. It was flown at the commemorations of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 2007.[52][53] This decision elicited criticism from those who believe it should not be given equal status to the Canadian flag and received praise from people who believe that it is important to retain the ties to Canada's past.[52][53]

In Quebec, the provincial flag (a white cross on a field of blue with four fleurs-de-lis) can be considered a national flag along with the Maple Leaf flag, as is the Acadian flag in the Acadian regions of the Maritime provinces,[22][54] and the flags of the Iroquois Nation, the Metis Nation and other groups.

No law dictates the proper use of the Canadian flag. Canadian Heritage has released guidelines on how to correctly display the flag alone and with other flags. The guidelines deal with the order of precedence in which the Canadian flag is placed, where the flag can be used, how it is used, and what people should do to honour the flag. The suggestions, titled Flag Etiquette in Canada, were published by Canadian Heritage in book and online formats and last updated in August 2011.[55] The flag itself can be displayed on any day at buildings operated by the Government of Canada, airports, military bases, and diplomatic offices, as well as by citizens, during any time of the day. When flying the flag, it must be flown using its own pole and must not be inferior to other flags, save for, in descending order, the Queen's standard, the governor general's standard, any of the personal standards of members of the Canadian Royal Family, or flags of the lieutenant governors.[56] The Canadian flag is flown at half-mast in Canada to indicate a period of mourning. Canadian Forces does have a special protocol for folding the Canadian flag for presentations, such as during a funeral ceremony; CF does not recommend this method for everyday use.[57]

Since the adoption of the Canadian flag in 1965, the Canadian government has sponsored programs to promote it. Examples include the Canadian Parliamentary Flag Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the flag program run by the Department of Public Works. These programs increased the exposure of the flag and the concept that it was part of the national identity. To increase awareness of the new flag, the Parliamentary Flag Program was set up in December 1972, by the Cabinet and, beginning in 1973,[58] allowed members of the House of Commons to distribute flags and lapel pins in the shape of the Canadian flag to their constituents. Full-size flags that have been flown on Peace Tower and four other locations on Parliament Hill are packaged by the Department of Public Works and offered to the public free of charge. As of May 1, 2018, the program has a 99-year waiting list for Peace Tower flags, which are 2.3 by 4.6 metres (7.5 by 15 ft) in size, and a 86-year waiting list for flags from the other four locations (one on each side of Centre Block and one each over East and West Blocks), which are 1.4 by 2.7 metres (4.5 by 9 ft).[59][60]

Since 1996, February 15 has been commemorated as National Flag of Canada Day.[44] In 1996, Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps instituted the One in a Million National Flag Challenge.[61] This program was intended to provide Canadians with a million new national flags in time for Flag Day, 1997. The program was controversial because it cost some $45 million, and provided no means to hoist or fly the flags. The official numbers from Canadian Heritage put the expenses at $15.5 million, with approximately a seventh of the cost offset by donations.[62]