Advice on District Tartans

[starbkjrus]

Matt, I've been eyeing your Compendium of District Tartans for a while. I guess I need to oil the hinges on my wallet and buy it.

This one has gotten interesting. I went to the Ontario Government website (thanks for the tip Todd) and sure enough the Official Ontario tartan is shown and is the one I referenced in the article link in my first post.

Ontario's website says (www.gov.on.ca):
"The Official Tartan of Ontario
The Province of Ontario tartan is made up of four main different blocks containing the colours red and white with three shades of green and two shades of blue. The green shades symbolize the forests and fields of Ontario while the blue colours depict the water found in the province. The First Nations of Ontario are symbolized by the colour red and the sky over the province is depicted by the colour white. The tartan was adopted when the Tartan Act, introduced by Bill Murdoch, MPP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, received Royal Assent on June 23, 2000."

So I went to the Scottish Tartans Authority website and sure enough the one they list as being created by Jim MacNeil (got that from the article on heritage.scotsman.com) is registered with ITI number 006627.

I started wondering where to get the tartan and thought well, why not try Fraser & Kirkbright. Oddly they showed an Ontario tartan but a different one so I called The Scottish Weaver (F&K's affiliate in the States). I spoke with a very knowledgible person who after several calls back and forth between the States and Canada called me back and said he's going to have to dig into this one. He seemed very surprised that neither he nor F&K were aware of this tartan.

Oh well, it'll be interesting to see what he finds out (and whether I can lay hands on this tartan).

Thanks again for the help, guys. I'll add to this when I find out more.