On day in February, Debbie Hartlen would possibly promote one Canadian flag at her workshop in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Now, every day gross sales have hit roughly 300 flags, and that’s not counting her bigger on-line enterprise.
President Trump’s plan to impose crippling tariffs on Canadian exports is seen as a devastating menace to many Canadian companies and staff. His warning on commerce — mixed together with his repeated requires the USA to annex Canada — has the nation’s flag makers struggling to maintain up with immediately hovering demand.
“Isn’t it great?” mentioned Ms. Hartlen, who owns The Flag Store Nova Scotia. “Thanks, Trump. Who would have thought we’d be saying that?”
The renewed curiosity in Canada’s maple leaf flag, fueled by intense opposition to Mr. Trump’s concept of constructing Canada the 51st state and his financial threats, comes because the pink and white Canadian banner marks its sixtieth anniversary.
And for a nation the place flag waving is much less part of life than in the USA and flags are typically much less conspicuous, the Trump-fueled resurgence of Canadian patriotism has additionally revived the Canadian flag’s picture.
The maple leaf flag, typically flown the wrong way up or from hockey sticks, grew to become the defining image utilized by protesters who occupied and paralyzed Ottawa, Canada’s capital, for practically a month in 2022 in response to Covid restrictions.
Because of this, many Canadians have shied away from displaying their nationwide flag out of concern that they might be seen as endorsing the protests.
However issues began to vary as Flag Day in Canada, which is well known on Feb. 15, approached. Normally, the day passes by largely unnoticed. This time, in opposition to the backdrop of tariff threats and Mr. Trump’s criticisms of Canada, together with referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Governor Trudeau, 5 former prime ministers have known as on Canadians “to show the flag as never before.”
The federal government held sixtieth birthday celebrations, which included skaters holding aloft an enormous flag down a Nineteenth-century canal in Ottawa that doubles as an enormous ice skating rink through the winter. And all through the nation, Canadians are doing one thing many hardly ever do: flying flags outdoors their properties.
L’étendard Flags and Banners, an organization primarily based in Quebec Metropolis, makes about 25,000 Canadian flags for the federal authorities and 10,000 extra for different clients and makes use of what is often the gradual winter season to construct up stock main as much as Canada Day on July 1.
This 12 months demand for flags is so excessive that the corporate might have to rent additional staff to deal with the surge, mentioned Mario Trahan, one of many firm’s homeowners.
“There’s a peak simply earlier than the July 1 however it’s at all times the identical sample yearly,” mentioned Mr. Trahan, whose firm has been within the flag enterprise for 30 years. “However we haven’t seen a rush like this.”
Earlier than the present model of the flag was adopted, Canada had spent practically a century making an attempt to create and agree on a nationwide flag that was not merely carried over from its previous as a British colony.
“English Canadians specifically have been divided about their identification,” mentioned Forrest Move, a vexillologist, or flag scholar, at Library and Archives Canada, the nationwide archive. “British imperial identification nonetheless loomed massive.”
The outcome, he mentioned, was that Canada first used Britain’s Union Jack, which is formally often known as the royal union flag, as its nationwide flag. In 1892, the British Admiralty formally allowed Canadian industrial ships to fly a pink flag that was often known as the Canadian Purple Ensign, with the Union Jack in a single nook and a smaller defend of Canada that underwent many design changes.
Quickly, the Canadian Purple Ensign was getting used on land, significantly by the navy throughout World Conflict I, earlier than gaining official standing in 1946.
Many Canadians regarded the pink ensign as largely a “place holder,” mentioned Dr. Move, whose dissertation was on flags.
Varied committees at varied instances thought-about hundreds of proposed Canadian flags, together with one, Dr. Move mentioned, that featured a lady in a bikini.
“It was one thing of a cottage trade, the manufacturing of recent flag designs,” he mentioned.
But it surely was Lester B. Pearson, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his work resolving the Suez disaster and previous Liberal prime minister, who in the end chosen the only Maple Leaf design.
But it surely was a tough promote at first. The debate in Parliament to adopt it was described by one historian as “among the many ugliest within the Home of Commons historical past” due to the robust opposition from members of Parliament to diluting British heritage.
However as soon as the talk was settled and the design accepted, Canadians shortly warmed to their new flag, Dr. Move mentioned.
Throughout the Vietnam Conflict, anecdotal tales about American vacationers stitching maple leaf patches onto their backpacks earlier than heading overseas grew to become a supply of cross-border resentment, significantly given Canada’s robust opposition to the conflict.
However the protests in Ottawa, which grew to become often known as the trucker convoy — and that polls confirmed most Canadians strongly opposed — damage the nation’s romance with its flag.
“The co-option of the flag by a small phase of the inhabitants created a number of discomfort for Canadians,” mentioned Heather Nicol, the director of the Canadian research college at Trent College in Peterborough, Ontario. “Lots of people felt like: ‘Effectively I don’t know if we need to take a look at that flag or fly that flag once more.’”
Nonetheless, in a single downtown Ottawa neighborhood that endured the ear splitting, late evening air horn honking by protesting truckers, Sam Hudson by no means took down the 4 Canadian flags that largely cowl the window of the tailor store he opened 15 years in the past after emigrating from Jordan. (There may be additionally a Scottish flag within the window in honor of his first buyer.)
“I saved them as a result of they’re the image for our nation,” Mr. Hudson mentioned. “It’s not a logo for sure individuals. I respect this flag. It’s a logo for 40 million individuals who stay on this land.”
Now with Mr. Trump’s denigration of Canada, Mr. Hudson mentioned he needs extra Canadians to observe his instance and begin displaying the flag.
“In all places, any time, all of the 12 months,” Mr. Hudson mentioned earlier than hemming some trousers. “That is our I.D.”
