Uniform Insignia Forum

If Quebec gets independent or are independent today, what could its military ranks would look like?

Probably some iteration of current Canadian ranks. Armies are expensive to equip and I have found that most new nations adopt the ranking systems of their former colonial masters even if they hate them!

general_tiu wrote:If Quebec gets independent or are independent today, what could its military ranks would look like?

Hi general_tiu!

I was thinking that they might start anew, and make their ranks similar to that of France, to demonstrate cultural ties to France, and to further distance themselves from Canadian and British (and Commonwealth) military traditions.

Chuck

The current CF insignia looks closer to US military insignia than that of Britian. The only hold over from the British style ranks are the Warrant Officer insignia. The officer ranks basically use the cuff rings from the USN (without the stars or any other devices).
As far as going to a French inspired ranks system, I don't really see that happening. If you look at the Montreal Police insignia, it's basically the CF officer insignia with the crowns and maple leaves replaced. I see that more as an option for a Quebec army.
The only thing they might do to copy France is to re-do the non-commissioned ranks and turn the chevrons point up (but then maybe not).

On thinking about it some more, it would be easiest for an independant Quebec to keep the armed forces insignia similar to what they are now, just swapping out maple leaves/crowns for fleur de lis. The company that supplies insignia to the Canadian military as well as many police forces (including those in Quebec) is in Montreal (William Scully Ltd.). It would be easier and cheaper to use the templates they already use for rank insignia , just making small changes as mentioned above (using fleur de lis).

The current rank structure works well for a Quebec republic as frencch language rank titles are simliar to those of France anyway.
This is how I see the Armee de la Republic du Quebec. The cheapest and easiest solution for a small military is to copy the unified CF idea and have one uniform for the military with common rank structure (land, air, and water elements being separate corps or commands within the army). The uniform would most likely be blue with gold rank insignia and QUEBEC national shoulder flash. Rank insignia as follows;

Non-commissioned ranks

Soldat (premier classe) - one chevron
Corperal - two chevrons
Corperal Chef - two chevrons with fleur de lis
Sergeant - three chevrons with fleur de lis
Sergeant Chef - three chevrons with fleur de lis within laural wreath
Adjudent - fleur de lis within laural wreath
Adjudent Chef - Coat of arms of Quebec

Officers - I see them using the same gold rings (or bars) as the CF (and Montreal Police), using french rank titles of course. The only changes I could see is them being used on shoulder boards instead of around the cuffs.
The general ranks may be a bit similar to those of the Montreal Police with some changes. I could see the crossed swords being moved to the bottom of the shoulder strap with the fleur de lis above it (1-4 fleur de lis showing the progression of rank).

I'll add my voice (being a native quebecois) and say that chosing something after france is highly doubtful. The currently used one were adopted after the conquest so were never even used in what is now quebec and france nowaday, while linked culturaly, is still seen as a foreign country so that would be like an independent puerto rico deciding to adopt modern spanish based rank insignias.

much more likely, as as been said to have a modified canadian type or pick something different but still simple enough (could be based on the current SQ ones instead, see second set).

[img]http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/2241/qcranks.png[/img]

And the senior officers of a Quebec army would be current CF generals and colonels. They'd be comfortable with an adaptation of the CF ranks. But their political masters may not like it. I like the idea of the SQ ranks. I do think the Quebec generals would want to keep the general's device of the crossed sabre and baton - because they would have been seeking that for years.

I like Mr. Pasquin's work and certainly he would have a better idea as I have never been to Quebec, but thought I would attempt anyway.

DarthGaddafi wrote:I like Mr. Pasquin's work and certainly he would have a better idea as I have never been to Quebec, but thought I would attempt anyway.

any idea for the NCOs ?

I'm working on a few ideas. Yours are good and I doubt I can top them. Here is an alteration I made to my proposal.

I really do not know much about the history behind the struggle for Independence. I did look at the Wikipedia page for this and noticed that "Quebec" is huge. They can marshal some resources. If it even can to blows and they prevailed they can award the Marshal of Liberty (dignity of the state) rank to the wartime chief.

Hi guys!

More hypothetical pondering...
Such fun!

I like all of these so far but Marc's second set of officer and NCO insignia are the ones that catch my eye at the moment. I like the subtle changes that are neither fully French nor contemporary Canadian. Silver sabre-and-baton insignia could be added below the silver fleur-de-lys for General Officers, if required — although that would be a terribly "British" thing to do...! (and I quite like the simplicity as they are).

My only other thought would be to change the diamonds on the various NCO grades to yellow / gold fleur-de-lys; this could be just for the highest Adjudant-Chef rank or for all of those NCOs where diamonds appear, using a fleur-de-lys within a laurel wreath to differentiate Adjudant-Chef from Adjudant-Maitre.

I imagine that the formal uniforms would be dark blue with insignia worn on the cuffs for all grades and fleur-de-lys worn above the distinction stripes. Epaulette-type shoulder straps could also be worn, perhaps carrying regimental insignia for NCOs, with fleur-de-lys / National insignia on the jacket collars. Branch of service or specialty insignia would be left breast pocket pendant badge.

I also imagine bullion cord chin straps for officers rather than leather straps with or without gold laced facing. I also get a feeling that bullion stripe decoration around the hat bands, to match the cuff stripes (for all officers), would be more appropriate than the use of peak embroidery for senior officers.

As an additional detail, I would suggest using some form of branch-of-service colours but using them sparingly; narrow edging to the thin rank stripes for NCOs, perhaps trouser stripes too (with gold for officer, double for General Officers). Maybe branch colour hat bands for enlisted with black cap cords for junior enlisted, black hat bands with rank stripes for Adjudants with branch colour cords and twisted gold/colour cords for officers and all gold for generals.

What do you think...?

DarthGaddafi wrote:I'm working on a few ideas. Yours are good and I doubt I can top them. Here is an alteration I made to my proposal.

I really do not know much about the history behind the struggle for Independence. I did look at the Wikipedia page for this and noticed that "Quebec" is huge. They can marshal some resources. If it even can to blows and they prevailed they can award the Marshal of Liberty (dignity of the state) rank to the wartime chief.

Quebec is quite big in term of territory but population wise, not so much. If you want to have a rough idea of how many troops an independent quebec army might muster, take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Force_Quebec_Area

Medic_in_Uniform wrote: I imagine that the formal uniforms would be dark blue with insignia worn on the cuffs for all grades and fleur-de-lys worn above the distinction stripes. Epaulette-type shoulder straps could also be worn, perhaps carrying regimental insignia for NCOs, with fleur-de-lys / National insignia on the jacket collars.

The only real problem with a dark blue uniform is that it would made them look like municipal policemen:

[img]http://www.lavoixpop.com/media/photos/unis/photo_667401_resize.jpg[/img]

I would imagine that they would retain their traditional uniforms (different regiments have different ones) or that maybe (especialy in the case of the 22e régiment, which use red coats and black fur hats) something harking back to colonial time's compagnie france de la marine being a white jacket with blue pants and distinctives. Something like this:

[img]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/2747/qcaltuni.jpg[/img]

I also imagine bullion cord chin straps for officers rather than leather straps with or without gold laced facing. I also get a feeling that bullion stripe decoration around the hat bands, to match the cuff stripes (for all officers), would be more appropriate than the use of peak embroidery for senior officers.

would look good.

Yes, I see your point about the police similarities — I guess it's about how you set up the uniform style of the military uniforms compared to the police-type uniform; after all, many countries use dark blue for both military formal dress and police. I agree that keeping established regimental traditions for those units that are likely to be co-opted in their entirety would make sense (or reverting to pre-CF unification traditions where they exist). I guess the difficulty would be with those units that would need to be established from scratch.

Using hat band decoration in lieu of peak decoration would be a very French way of doing this but I wonder how many senior officers would be ready to give up their peak embroidery, especially as they would then not appear quite so obviously on a par with their international counterparts (or even domestic police, fire and EMS senior officers for that matter — unless they too moved over to this pattern).

I like Marc's ideas (top one similar to what I suggested). The SQ variant is intersting and I like Medic's ideas for changes to the NCO ranks (using the fleur de lys instead of the diamond shapes).

The only thing I would suggest is that I couldn't see a Quebec republic just copying the CF NCO ranks totally, as there is no real reason to have just one SGT rank and three WO ranks. Not sure why the CF did it when they unified (I read somewhere that it was to bring it in line with the civil serice who had three "senior supervior" positions. Not sure if this is true or not.) I think that the Quebec military would have NCO ranks that would make more sense, especially in relation to their allies (who they would work with on a regular basis, given the small size that the military would be). That's why I suggested two SGT ranks (sergent and sergent-chef) and two WO ranks (adjudent and adjudent-chef). I would make an alternate suggestion for the adjudent ranks; they both would have a narrow gold stripe with a gold fleur de lys above for adj. and the same within a laural wreath for adj-chef. I don't think any insignia is needed for officer cadet, but if wanted, could use a broken medium gold stripe (similar looking to the OC rank in Marc's SQ inspired ranks).
As far as uniforms go, never thought about a blue uniform looking too much like police. Could still use a blue colour, maybe a brighter blue or blue grey instead. As dress uniforms are usually only used for parade these days, most of the time the troops would be wearing the camo working dress, so wouldn't really matter.
I agree that ceemonial regimental uniforms would still be retained (though it would be hard to say if the Quebec military would keep the British style regimant names or just go with numbers). In any case I couldn't see them keeping the British inspired red coats for any ceremonial uniform.
That's just my 5 cents (can't say 2 cents, as the penny is no longer used in Canada)

OK guys, this is just a first pass at what I was describing above. Ignore the cap badges as they are really only intended as place-fillers for appropriate regimental badges. Having said that, I guess the basic concept could work for general officers / senior staff officers; alternatively the generic cap badge approach works well enough for the US with unit and branch affiliation shown elsewhere on the uniform.

Anyway, here are the pics; as ever, I'm open to suggestions...

Medic_in_Uniform wrote:OK guys, this is just a first pass at what I was describing above. Ignore the cap badges as they are really only intended as place-fillers for appropriate regimental badges. Having said that, I guess the basic concept could work for general officers / senior staff officers; alternatively the generic cap badge approach works well enough for the US with unit and branch affiliation shown elsewhere on the uniform.

Anyway, here are the pics; as ever, I'm open to suggestions...

one small correction: it should be Maréchal du Québec, not de. "de québec" means "from quebec city". Who would bear that title anyway ? Honnourary title given to a distinguished retired general ?

In term of colours, I a white top for the peaked cap would look better in my opinon and help distinguish from other organisations.

One last point, the shape of the epaulettes looks too french to me.

marcpasquin wrote: one small correction: it should be Maréchal du Québec, not de. "de québec" means "from quebec city".

D'ohh... my French is a little rusty. Close but no cigar, huh....?! I'll correct it with any updates.

Who would bear that title anyway ? Honnourary title given to a distinguished retired general ?

Good question. I honestly don't know. I just figured it looked good and wanted to include it in the overall scheme. I guess I was thinking of the way the Governor-General of Canada has specific separate insignia as Commander-in-Chief, on behalf of the Queen but I'm conscious that any President of a hypothetical Republic of Quebec, may not wish to wear military uniform in the same way.

I guess it depends whether there would be an executive president as de jure Commander-in-Chief, like the US, or whether the role would be a constitutional President, outside the executive, who would exercise the role on a ceremonial basis only. Maybe something closer to the Governor-General's insignia for a constitutional President would be to use the fleur-de-lys in wreath only and abandon the crossed batons and then have this as a ceremonial uniform for the President as titular C-in-C but without assigning any specific military rank...?

In term of colours, I a white top for the peaked cap would look better in my opinon and help distinguish from other organisations.

You know, I really did think about that but abandoned it in favour of keeping the dark caps as I figured white might look too "naval" but it's an easy change to make.

I also meant to point out that I used the bright blue from the Quebec flag as the generic branch colour but with the intention that this could be replaced with other colours for specific specialist branches of service.

One last point, the shape of the epaulettes looks too french to me.

Well, that was kind of the intention — but then these would be separate shoulder boards and worn only for formal dress / parades / evening mess dress and so on.

I guess day-to-day working wear and service dress would use simple slip on shoulder-slides in the usual elongated trapezoid shape (with embroidered insignia) for things like shirts, sweaters and working jackets. For ordinary wear, service dress tunics would have plain shoulder straps, again in the usual rectangular / trapezoid shape, with buttoned pointed ends and loops of bullion lace that could be slid over and changed as required (+/- pin-on fleur-de-lys).

If we're talking about being completely independant then a republic type government is most likely as many Quebecois don't care for the British monarchy. But if we were talking about the "soverignty assocciation" idea being successfully negotiated and a Kingdon of Quebed being formed as an assoiciated state with Canada, then the monarchist symbols would be maintained. I would see the military using basically the same uniforms as the CF with QUEBEC titles on the tops of the sleeves (replacing CANADA) and using the same rank structure, keeping the crowns but replacing the maple leaves with fleur de lys (so very similar to what Marc first posted but with the crowns retained for WO and GEN ranks). That's the only way I'd see Quebec continuing to use the monarcy or monarchist symbols.

Surely that's the whole point about a hypothetical question like this: it's all one great big "what if...?"

We're not asking what the likely reality would be, we're speculating about how things *might* evolve under one particular set of circumstances.

I did wonder about how things might play out if Quebec became independent or at least devolved with autonomous government but still opted to remain within the Commonwealth — but that wasn't really the question that was asked in the original post. If devolved autonomy were the case then I'm inclined to agree that, under those circumstances, something close to the status-quo (with perhaps some minor alterations) would be the likely outcome. I guess it would all depend in whether some sort of mutual defence agreement with the rest of Canada was established and so on...


The bigger question much closer to home for the British is what would happen if Scotland votes to leave the union in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence...?!

Medic_in_Uniform wrote:I did wonder about how things might play out if Quebec became independent or at least devolved with autonomous government but still opted to remain within the Commonwealth

One thing to bear in mind is that within the commonwealth, monarchies are actualy the minority. Most countries are republics and even some ardent federalists have appeared rather lukewarm toward the monarchy over the years. To be quite honnest, I can't imagine a sovereignists party trying to sell a platform of "independence while retaining the monarchy" succesfully any time soon.

That being said, trying to imagine an independent quebec with a monarch would probably be more plausible if the independance occured earlier such as if there had been not confederation or going further, no union with upper canada.

The bigger question much closer to home for the British is what would happen if Scotland votes to leave the union in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence...?!

I remember reading that salmond proposed to stay within the commonwealth and keep the queen as another realm. If that was so, they might simply adapt british current insignias with the historical crown of scotland and the order of the thisle as pip:

[img]http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/604/scottishcrownandpip.jpg[/img]

Medic_in_Uniform wrote: D'ohh... my French is a little rusty. Close but no cigar, huh....?!

Well, having a marshal for the old capital itself would only lead to Montreal whinging about it (and I say that as a former montrealer myself)

Good question. I honestly don't know. I just figured it looked good and wanted to include it in the overall scheme. I guess I was thinking of the way the Governor-General of Canada has specific separate insignia as Commander-in-Chief, on behalf of the Queen but I'm conscious that any President of a hypothetical Republic of Quebec, may not wish to wear military uniform in the same way.

probably a safe bet. Unless things change a lot, it would look to most a bit too "banana-republickish". Even the Lieutenant-governors of quebec in the last 5 decades seem to have shyed away from wearing one even though they are entitled to wear the windsor uniform.

I even read a fair few negative comments made about the fact that Michaële Jean (the previous governor general) had decided to wear the military style uniform on many occasions. I think it was the fact that unlike some other previous GG, she had no military experience whatsoever as well as changing views toward the post.

Maybe something closer to the Governor-General's insignia for a constitutional President would be to use the fleur-de-lys in wreath only and abandon the crossed batons and then have this as a ceremonial uniform for the President as titular C-in-C but without assigning any specific military rank...?

Maybe it could be a bit like the US presidents who might were say a military jacket without headcover and special badge in the place other then where the actual military insignias are worn (over the left breast pocket for example).

One last point, the shape of the epaulettes looks too french to me.

Well, that was kind of the intention — but then these would be separate shoulder boards and worn only for formal dress / parades / evening mess dress and so on.

[/quote]

I guess to me it just seem odd to use something which I identify too much with what to us is a foreign country. I think too often people assume that because we share a language we would look to france for many of our new sovereign identity whereas, to take an example, this would be like Texas separating tommorow and deciding to adopt a british inspired uniform just because most inhabitants speak english.

All fair points! I guess to those of us outside Canada and Quebec there probably is a tendency to either over-play or perhaps mis-assign the significance of the historic French cultural connection.

Regarding the style of epaulettes for the hypothetical insignia, the bottom line regarding the insignia though is that they would work perfectly well as cuff stripes or on any shape of shoulderboards or epaulette slides. As much as I like them, however, in practical terms I can definitely see the point in simply keeping the existing pattern of cuff stripes (or parallel shoulder stripes) given that the current sequence is well-understood and would be broadly recognised all over the world. Not to mention the fact that it would avoid a lot of unnecessary additional expense...!

I fully understand the sentiment that would lead to a preference for an independent Quebec wishing to have it's own Head of State (whether executive or constitutional with a parliamentary executive) rather than maintaining any links with the British monarchy.

This would be very different to Scotland where, in the event of a "yes" vote in the referendum, they would likely remain a constitutional monarchy with the Queen as constitutional Head of State and presumably become another member state of the Commonwealth. The heraldic representation of the Crown of Scotland, taken from the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom, as used in Scotland, is already used in a large number of official Government emblems and other badges, such as the Police and Ambulance Service and also the Royal Mail in Scotland. It's also used in the cap badge for the amalgamated Royal Regiment of Scotland — so it's not a massive leap to do exactly what you suggest and subtly amend the army rank insignia by replacing the St Edwards Crown with the Crown of Scitland and the star of the Order of the Bath (or Garter for Guards regiments and so on) with the star of the order of the Order of the Thistle.

Medic_in_Uniform wrote:All fair points! I guess to those of us outside Canada and Quebec there probably is a tendency to either over-play or perhaps mis-assign the significance of the historic French cultural connection.

I think one thing that would compound the problem is that the connection with the french military is in colonial times at a time before the revolution and thus the later adoption of the current french insignias so even if an independent quebec somehow decided to draw inspiration from that, you would end up with unrecognisable ones since at the time only other ranks wore insignias (and in the case of the corporal that was in the form of adornment around the cuffs button holes) with officers wearing a gorget but apart from generals, had no special distinction to tell their specific ranks that I'm aware of.

Ha!

Yes, that might be delving a little *too* far into historical tradition to be practical with contemporary uniforms!

Time for plan "B"...