In Canada, the maple leaf is abruptly exhibiting its colours in all places.
The enduring flag is bolted onto the facades of brick properties. It’s planted on automotive dashboards. Town of Mississauga, subsequent door to Toronto, this week raised oversize Canadian flags outdoors its metropolis corridor. It additionally eliminated the American flags that had been waving alongside the shores of Lake Ontario and in arenas the place American groups usually face off in opposition to Canadian hockey rivals.
Only a decade in the past, newly inaugurated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau known as Canada the “first postnational state” – a multicultural nation bounded not essentially by a flag however by fashionable shared values.
Why We Wrote This
U.S. President Donald Trump’s harsh tone towards Canada has spurred a rising nationalism to the north, albeit in a comparatively pleasant, Canadian-style type. Proof of the shift: newly distinguished maple-leaf flags dotting the panorama in help of the Canadian – not an American – state.
Immediately, with U.S. President Donald Trump launching a full-scale commerce battle and threatening to subsume Canada as America’s 51st state, that seems like historic historical past, even when Alvin Tedjo, a Mississauga metropolis councillor, says the transfer is “much less anti-American and extra pro-Canadian.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who took workplace on March 14, is unlikely to echo Mr. Trudeau’s definition of Canada as a spot with “no core identification.”
“You might need been in a position to get away with it final 12 months,” says Heather Nicol, director of the College for the Research of Canada at Trent College in Peterborough, Ontario. “However not this 12 months, no.”
Certainly, in simply two months, nationalism – albeit Canadian fashion – has proved to carry a robust attract. “You may’t be post-national should you’re not nationwide,” says Dr. Nicol. “[With] the Trump risk we outline ourselves now as a state. We’re the Canadian state. Not the 51st state, however the Canadian state.”
Mr. Carney has shortly struck a defiant new tone. “The Individuals need our assets, our water, our land, our nation. In the event that they succeed, they are going to destroy our lifestyle,” he mentioned. “America isn’t Canada. And Canada by no means, ever, will probably be a part of America in any method, form, or type.”
Discovering solidarity
This isn’t the primary time the USA has threatened Canadian sovereignty. It’s a theme that predates the founding of Canada itself. Capturing the territory was a “mere matter of marching,” per the notorious phrases of Thomas Jefferson in drumming up help for battle in opposition to the British Empire in 1812. However President Trump has articulated it extra forcefully, and extra usually, than any time in Canada’s 158-year historical past.
In response, Canadians are working the flags up the pole – with the maple leaf conveying new that means and a sure solidarity.
The Canadian flag, which is simply 60 years previous, has by no means cropped up in all places from vehicles to lawns to fuel stations, because the Stars and Stripes does within the U.S. However now, flagmakers and sellers throughout the nation are reporting that gross sales are hovering, based on media reviews; in the meantime, Mississauga is the third metropolis in Ontario to have ordered the reducing of American flags.
Anxious however indignant, Canadians are boycotting American merchandise and forgoing American holidays. “Purchase Canada” campaigns are gaining floor from the highest down and the underside up. However Canadians don’t have a tendency to love what they classify as American-style patriotism.
When the Freedom Convoy, a bunch indignant on the authorities for vaccine mandates through the pandemic, flew the maple Leaf in 2022 throughout blockades in Ottawa, for instance, it evoked the form of nationalism that many Canadians eschew.
But the current U.S. tone, says Mr. Tedjo, the town councillor, has pushed Canadians towards a renewed appreciation for what it means to be Canadian. “Canadians have rallied across the flag within the final a number of months,” he says. “I believe it’s good for Canadians to grasp how we’re totally different.”
Nonetheless, to be Canadian can also be to be a neighbor, many Canadians say. On the pier at Cosy Harbour, the place Lake Ontario feeds into the Credit score River, Roy Clifton says he has blended emotions. The co-owner of a restaurant, who sports activities a Yankees cap, isn’t in opposition to Individuals or their flag, however in opposition to their president. “It’s actually unhappy what has occurred. That is hurting Canadians, and it’s hurting Individuals,” he says.
At Mississauga Metropolis Corridor, Jordan Currie, a younger author, says she doesn’t belief the time period “postnational.” It reminds her of “post-feminism.” To her, it’s clear that society has not but moved past the necessity to combat gender inequality or nativism. She worries that the spat between Canada and the U.S. may deliver out the worst nationalist tendencies in each international locations.
When she sees the Canadian flags, like the brand new ones proper behind her, “I’m not like, ‘ew,’ ” she says. She hopes it stays that method.
