It was 50 years ago that a teacher living in Hodgeville designed a flag that would leave its mark on Saskatchewan forever. 

The Saskatchewan flag turned 50 years old last Sunday, and Anthony Drake, who designed the flag, said he has tremendous pride in his design.    

"It's kind of pride and a pleasure to think that I was just an ordinary school teacher," he said. "I still have this modest feeling that it's been a wonderful thing that I've achieved, and it's something that I will always remember. I've put something into my life that wouldn't have been there otherwise, something very worth having."   

Drake said he designed the flag due to a contest that the province was having.  

"The $1,000, I think that must have been the reason," Drake joked. "I did it with thin coloured cards that they use in schools. I got a pile of those in different colours and put them on various different items to try and put them together."   

Drake let his creativity run wild and designed a total of 13 different flags, and he explained his design that won it all.   

"The first thing that struck me was the appearance of the province. That's an essential part of the flag. Looking at the general nature of the province, I saw that in the north there were a lot of trees and grass and the south was all crops growing, wheat and other things. That always seemed to look like a creamy yellow colour. So, the green and yellow I thought would be the idea. I put those on, and then I thought well it couldn't be just green and yellow."  

"I thought the shield would be another perfect thing to put in the top left-hand corner," Drake continued. "Then I thought about the bottom right-hand corner and about certain possibilities like maybe the famous Saskatchewan bird, or tree, or whatever. I looked and discovered that a certain flower was the provincial flower in the sense that it was theirs. I got a picture of that and was quite surprised and amazed (at) how superb it looked."  

For designing the winning flag, Drake won $1000 in 1969, which is similar to getting just over $7,000 now.