Royal Canadian Navy Badge

The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) was the navy of Canada from 1911 until 1968 when the three Canadian services were unified to form the Canadian Forces.

The modern Canadian navy was officially known as Canadian Forces Maritime Command (MARCOM), however, unofficially MARCOM is represented as the "Canadian Navy" and maintains many traditions of its predecessor. It was not correct to use the name "Royal Canadian Navy" or its abbreviation "RCN" in references to Canada's naval forces after February 1, 1968. In 1968, the Royal Canadian Navy Badge was replaced by the Canadian Forces Maritime Command (MARCOM) badge, however it was not written off.

Since 1968, this badge was re-assigned to Canadian Forces Naval Operations branch, a personnel branch of the Canadian Forces. Variations if the badge are also used as cap badges of the Canadian Navy. However, the situation was reversed in 2011, and Canadian Navy was reestablished as the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) once again. At the time this article was edited, the fate of the old RCN badge was not yet clear. Stay tuned.

This is another example of impressive Canadian military heraldry, which was a true pleasure to work with. A centerpiece of the design is a gold-colored anchor, on which I used various textures of gold, copper and bronze to achieve a slightly worn out and stressed look. I also added a nice 3D volume, to make the anchor pop. As it always happens with Canadian military heraldry, the most challenging part was the King Edward’s crown. It is also the most fun part to work on, because you can go nuts with textures of gold, precious stones and silks. The result speaks for itself.
[Edited on May 4th, 2017 to add the new RCN badge] Several years later, I had to re-visit this topic, since the new RCN badge design was approved.

As always, the above artworks are available  via my “Military Insignia” galleries from FineArt America and RedBubble. You can just follow the links in the article to get to the corresponding galleries.


To active duty or reserve military personnel, veterans and their family members: I grant an explicit permission to download the above images to be used for non-profit/non-commercial and charitable causes, benefiting troops and their families, as well as for non-commercial internal duty-specific purposes, such as unit website design, training materials and presentations.