^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Baie-D’Urfé, Quebec (Canada)

image by Ben Koorengevel, edited by Luc Baronian

The municipality
City flag

See also:

The Municipality

The municipality of Baie-D'Urfé (Baie-d'Urfée until 1960; Baie-d'Urfé from 1960 to 2002; 3,850 inhabitants in 2011; 603 ha) is located in the West Island area of the Island of Montreal.

Baie-D'Urfé is named for François Saturnin Lascaris d'Urfé, who was appointed in 1685 priest of the Saint-Louis parish, which had been established in 1676 by the Order of Saint-Sulpice, then lord of the Montreal Island. Isolated on the shore and surrounded by a dense forest, the parish was threatened by the Iroquois; in autumn 1687, eight colonists were killed in an ambush, including the sacristan Jean de la Londe, first colonist of the area. Father d'Urfé was repatriated to France; the parish church was transferred in 1703 to a safer site, close to the Senneville fort.
Centuries later, the area was served by the Bayview railway station. In 1902, some inhabitants asked the railway to be renamed as Bois-d'Urfé, which gave the name of the town that was incorporated in 1911.
http://baie-durfe.qc.ca/fr/ - Municipal website
Ivan Sache, 26 March 2017

City flag

I took a photo of this flag in 1999 in a Montreal Urban Community building. The background color was a paler shade of blue however.
Luc Baronian, 9 May 2005

The flag of Baie-D'Urfé is blue with, in the middle, a white disk charged with the municipal arms and the writing "BAIE D'URFÉ 1686".

The arms of Baie-D'Urfé were designed in 1961 by Mayor Tommy Lee, based on the arms of François d'Urfé. The Urfé shield, "Vair a chief gules", is engraved on the base of François d'Urfé's chalice, preserved in the Notre-Dame Museum. The shield is crowned by a Marquis' coronet, recalling that François d'Urfé was Marquis of Beauzé. The crown of thorns surrounding the shield recalls that d'Urfé belonged to the Society of Saint-Sulpice.
- http://www.baie-durfe.qc.ca/FRANCAIS/armoiries.html - Municipal website

The Urfé arms are seen in several rooms of the family castle, the Bâtie d'Urfé, located in Saint-Étienne-le-Molard (Forez, France). Claude d'Urfé (1501-1558), Governor and Bailiff of Forez, represented the King of France at the Council of Trent (1546) and was appointed Ambassador of France at the Holy See; he revamped the castle in Renaissance style, building a grotto that is the last from that period kept in France. His grandson Honoré d'Urfé (1567-1625) is the author of the first novel sequence in the French literature, "L'Astrée" (5,400 pages, written between 1607 and 1625).
- http://www.loire.fr/jcms/lw_896393/saint-etienne-le-molard-la-batie-durfe
Ivan Sache, 23 July 2012

The arms of Baie-D'Urfé were inscribed on 15 August 2012 on the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges, Vol. VI, p. 178. The announcement of the Letters Patent was made on March 23, 2012, in Vol. 147, p. 537 of the Canada Gazette.

Symbolism
The arms were borne by François-Saturnin Lascaris d’Urfé (1641-1701), a Sulpician missionary and the first resident priest of Saint-Louis-du-Haut-de-l’Île, the site of the present-day town of Baie-d’Urfé. The last member of the Lascaris d’Urfé family died in 1794, and the town has used the arms since 1960 to honour its association with the family. The unusual arrangement of the vair pattern at the base of the arms replicates their rendering on a silver cup once owned by François-Saturnin Lascaris d’Urfé, now in the collection of the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. According to tradition, the arms were granted to Wlphe le Robuste, the progenitor of the family of Lascaris d’Urfé, to honour his participation in the Siege of Antioch in 1098. In battle, Wlphe wore a coat of scarlet lined with squirrel fur, the heraldic “vair”, and this coat inspired the design.

Artist Information
Painter: D. Robert Turnbull
Calligrapher: Shirley Mangione

http://reg.gg.ca/heraldry/pub-reg/project.asp?lang=e&ProjectID=2310 - Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges

Photos of the flag
http://wikimapia.org/7128971/fr/H%c3%b4tel-de-Ville-de-Baie-d-Urf%c3%a9-Maison-Charles-Saint-Denis
Ivan Sache, 26 March 2017