The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) has donated the historic first colour-standardized national flag to the Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) in Ottawa. It will be publicly displayed in 2017, when Canada celebrates its 150th birthday.

NRC, which celebrates its own 100th anniversary this month, is responsible for choosing the exact shade of red and testing the durability of fabrics for the Canadian flag. Its standards for the flag involved selecting a consistent, fade-resistant shade of red from among 500,000 variations.

CSTM closed its building in 2014, but continues operate a storage facility. A newly renovated facility is set to open in 2017.