Our Cub Flags
In the first and second episodes of our miniseries, we featured three very old Scout flags. Now it’s time to switch from green to yellow, and swing over to Cubs.
Our oldest Cub flag is hand painted with a rather quirky wolf’s head logo. It’s not dated so we’re open to guesses as to when it was used… maybe some time between the 1940s and the 1960s? Our Cub Pack started much earlier than that though, and won the Edward Shield for the first time in 1931, again in 1936, and next in… well in fact 1936 was the most recent time that we won it!
There’s a family story behind the 5th Claremont St Saviour’s Cub Pack flag in our archives. 5th Claremont met just down the road at St Saviour’s Anglican Church, on the corner of Bowwood Road and Main Road. It was only open for a few years between 1948 and 1956, and when it folded, some of its remaining members moved to 1st Claremont. One of them was John Webb, who started at 5th Claremont and went on to be a Scout, Rover and Assistant Scoutmaster at 1st Claremont, and also the first editor of Smoke Signals. John Webb’s two sons Jonathan and Ian are both current leaders in the group, and his grandchildren James and Julia are Scouts at 1st Claremont.
Some time around 1980 the Cub flag changed from a green wolf’s head to the red fleur de lis of the Boy Scouts of South Africa. The Springbok had been part of the Scout fleur de lis emblem in South Africa from at least the 1950s, but in a sideways view like the springbok rugby emblem. The new logo had a springbok head facing forwards instead, and the logo and flag stayed that way until they were replaced nationally in 2014. Our Cub pack collected a series of gold stars in the 1980s and early 1990s, but sadly the Pack closed in 1999 through lack of leaders and this flag was retired.
This is the current Cub flag, introduced soon after we relaunched the 1st Claremont Cub Pack in 2014. This was also the same year that the new “SCOUTS South Africa” purple branding and flags were introduced. As you can see, our Pack is still going strong with its collection of Gold Stars!
