Some Canadians are booing the U.S. national anthem at sporting events. “Buy Canadian” websites are springing up like desert wildflowers after the first spring rain. And folks from the north of the border are swearing off trips to the U.S. of A.
It’s been a remarkable start to the new year in Canada; like nothing I’ve seen in my 44 years living in the True North Strong and (for now) Free.
Canadians (not all, but a majority, I would say) began to worry last November when U.S. voters decided to re-elect Donald Trump. (Full disclosure, I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Toronto in 1981 to marry a Canadian woman I had met two years prior. I became a Canadian citizen in, I believe, 2001, and have dual citizenship. I can still vote in U.S. elections, and ticked off the name “Kamala Harris” on my ballot last fall. So did my sister and my father, who was a member of the Republican party from age 21 to probably age 75, when he became disgusted with the party’s positions on the war in Iraq. He was a long-time judge in the Bay Area – quite tough in his sentencing of criminals – and despises Trump’s lack of respect for the rule of law. As do I.)
The concerns began to reach even higher temperatures when Trump started joking about Canada becoming the 51st state. And then the president started talking about slapping tariffs on Canadian goods imported into the U.S.
I was at a Toronto Maple Leafs-Tampa Bay Lightning game in Toronto on inauguration day, and you could hear some scattered mumbles during the U.S. anthem. Then came the White House announcement last week that 25% tariffs on Canadian goods were on the way. And that’s when things started to get ugly.
Provincial premiers told government-owned liquor stores to rip bottles of bourbon and California wine off their shelves. Canadians set up “Buy Canadian” websites and began social media campaigns that showed what products at grocery stores were made or produced in Canada and which came from south of the border. Some would-be travellers I know said they would boycott red states. Some said they would boycott all U.S. states.
An enthusiastic Canadian at Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa. JIM BYERS PHOTO
This past Saturday night, many fans at an Ottawa Senators game against Minnesota booed the U.S. anthem, which would have been unthinkable even a month ago. The next day Toronto Raptors fans booed the Star Spangled Banner prior to a game against the Los Angeles Clippers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump this week worked out a 30-day pause in the tariffs, but the president is still making his “51st state” comments, and the U.S. continues to press Denmark to hand over Greenland, and Panama to give back the Panama Canal. That is keeping the Canadian pot boiling. so much so that the Angus Reid polling company stated today (Feb. 5, 2025) that the number of Canadians who say they are “very proud” of their country has risen 10 points compared to just two months ago; going from 34% to 44%. The same increase is noted in the number who say they have a “deep emotional attachment to Canada”, which has risen from 49% to 59%.
Canadians are angry, my friends. I’d say “like an old man sending back soup at a deli,” but this doesn’t seem like the time for Seinfeld jokes. This has gone far beyond late night talk show jokes and is starting to look like real pressure from the United States. And Canadians are furious.
I have tried some of my American friends about the depth of anger in my adopted country, which I dearly love, but I don’t think they quite get it. They better start soon, because Canadian pride is alive and well like never before. We’re not a war-like country, but we can fight like hell when we have to.
“We’re a peaceful people,” one Canadian I know told me yesterday. He then, of course, offered up a hockey analogy.
“If you piss us off we’ll jump over the boards, pull your jersey over your head and pound away.”
