How Donald Trump helped Canadians reclaim the flag

When the convoy protest rolled into town in 2022, the movement was wrapped in the Maple Leaf.

Big rigs were plastered with Canada’s flag. Convoyers in pickup trucks cruised around with flags flying from hockey sticks. Even F-CK TRUDEAU flags used a Maple Leaf to replace the letter U.

In the blink of an eye, the symbol previously associated with backpacking trips, Olympic victories and Canada Day became associated with blaring horns and anti-vaccine rhetoric.

“That was one of the saddest things about the convoy for me,” said Sean Burges, a senior instructor in global and international studies at Carleton University. “You can’t shut down a city and justify it as an act of patriotism. It was a concerted effort to define what patriotism is.”

Alex Silas, the national executive vice-president of PSAC, who was a community organizer during the protest, recalls a woman saying that her child would cower in fear when he saw the flag.

“It was infuriating how the convoy could co-opt that symbol. It was co-opted and turned into something nefarious and scary that said, ‘If we don’t like you, you don’t belong here,’ ” said Silas. “It was a sign of how nationalism can be dangerous.”

In February 2022, Heather Nicol, the director of the School for the Study of Canada and Canadian Studies at Trent University, wrote an essay for The Conversation.

“Wondering if the previously inoffensive symbolism of the Maple Leaf flag will remain unscathed is not so far-fetched. Can any one symbol suit the purposes of both those who enforce and challenge state laws and regulations equally?” she wrote. 

“I got quite a bit of mail about that,” said Nicol in an interview last week. “People explaining Canada to me. I got on a right-wing email list. It was pretty toxic.”

For many Canadians, seeing the flag used in connection with the convoy protest created a sense of confusion and ambivalence. Some, insisting it’s “our flag, too,” have hung the Maple Leaf next to pro-vaccine messages. Others have hesitated to fly it for fear they would be signalling solidarity with the convoy movement.

A 2023 survey of 430 people conducted by The Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research (CHASR) at the University of Saskatchewan in partnership with CBC Saskatchewan found that almost a quarter of the respondents said their feelings about the flag had become “less favourable” in recent years.

One respondent said the convoy’s use of the flag made it feel “tarnished.” 

“I don’t like the so-called ‘freedom fighters’ using it as their call to arms,” said another respondent. “Their Canada is not my Canada. My flag does not mean what theirs does.”

But in the past few months, the script has been flipped by the tariff crisis and U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence that Canada should be the 51st state.

All of a sudden, the flag is not a symbol of division but of unity.

Former prime ministers Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper have urged Canadians to fly the flag with pride as “never before” on Flag Day Saturday. 

“Basically, Trump said ‘we’re going to take your country away from you.’ And then he declared economic war on us,” said Burges.

“Trump has reminded us that we’re all Canadians. We can do anything we want to do because we have each other’s backs.”

Burges sparked the so-called “Battle of Billings Bridge” on Feb. 13, 2022 after learning that a convoy of trucks carrying gas cans would be travelling on Riverside Drive to join protesters downtown.

He mused on Facebook that a group of volunteers could block the corner of Bank Street and Riverside Drive to temporarily detain the convoy. The effort started with a few dozen volunteers and swelled to hundreds.

The conditions for releasing the vehicles were decided by “mass consensus,” said Burges. One of the conditions was that the drivers had to relinquish their Canadian flags. 

“It seemed to be an extremist right-wing phenomenon, and they had decided who got to use the flag.”

Burges notes that other political groups have laid claim to their national flags, including Brexiteers who claimed the Union Jack. Trump supporters have wrapped themselves in the stars and stripes. One of the best things about the events of recent weeks is that Canadians have reclaimed the flag, he said.

To a historian like Forrest Pass, there’s irony in the fact that the convoy movement co-opted the Maple Leaf flag, which was originally adopted by Lester B. Pearson’s Liberal government. Conservatives, who preferred the Red Ensign, which featured a Union Jack in the upper left corner, were outraged, and the Maple Leaf flag was associated with the centre and the left of centre.

The Canadian flag’s use by convoy protesters in 2022 was a sign that the flag had come of age, said Pass, a vexillologist — expert on flags — and curator with Library and Archives Canada. 

“It was being used in a way not envisioned by the people who created it,” he said. “It showed that the flag has come to be so universally accepted that it could be used across the political spectrum. It can represent all kinds of oppositional notions.”

In the past couple of weeks, the flag has come to be once more embraced by a broad spectrum of Canadians, said Pass.

“What is appropriated can be un-appropriated,” he said. “That confirms what I felt — that the flag is resilient, it’s adaptive, it’s ever-evolving. How long the current movement will last, I don’t know.”

In 2022, Nicol felt that convoy protesters had weaponized the flag, and she didn’t think it could be de-weaponized. She suggested that perhaps another symbol of Canada would emerge.

But no other symbol has come out to claim that spot, she said last week.

“Clearly, the Maple Leaf flag is resilient as a symbol. I think we’re bouncing back to business as usual. In general, the common understanding is that it’s a symbol of sovereignty and unity,” she said.

“It’s a matter of whether it can be re-appropriated.”

Nicol and Silas agree that not all Canadians see the flag as a benign symbol. Some Indigenous communities see it as a symbol of oppression, for example.

Canada also has to acknowledge its flaws to build a better Canada, said Silas, who has a Maple Leaf tattoo on his shoulder he acquired after a backpacking trip.

“I think it’s great that the flag is being used to combat Trumpism. But we still have a form of Trumpism here. It has to be about patriotism, not nationalism,” he said.

“We have to be careful around symbols. If we give symbols that much power, they can be used against us. The promise of Canada has to extend to everyone, including Indigenous people and newcomers.”

The upcoming provincial and federal elections are going to be a “pivot point,” said Silas.

“This is where we get to decide. Are we going to be a Maple Leaf-branded version of Trumpism or fulfil the ideals that Canada represents?”

Burges believes reclaiming the flag could be a permanent thing, but it will depend on political leadership and civil society. Social media, for example, is propelling consumption patterns away from American products and towards Canadian products, he notes.

“We had a break that we didn’t know how to manage,” said Burges.

“Trump has us all talking again. It will take something pretty major to fracture that. The danger is that our own political leaders fracture this.”

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