A Whiplash of Feelings about the Maple Leaf

Where have you spotted the Canadian flag in your neighbourhood lately?

It’s become an increasingly common sight in daily routines. Stores from small grocers to the likes of Save-On-Foods have been hanging them over their local products. Some Canadians have been flying them from their cars. Others have draped them over their balconies for all to see.

In the face of Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, the flag is being displayed proudly as a show of Canadian patriotism.

However, just a few years ago, flying the flag would have signalled something very different. Political analysts who study the flag have been tracking its whiplash of meanings.

In 2021 the flag’s use was muted on public flagpoles. The potential unmarked graves of 215 children had just been discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School site, and governments did not feel comfortable flying the flag at full-mast, viewing it as a symbol of colonization.

Then in 2022 it was adopted by the convoy movement and protesters of vaccine mandates.

“People on the liberal or progressive end of the spectrum were less inclined to use it,” said Forrest Pass. He is a curator with Library and Archives Canada and a professional vexillologist, someone who studies the history, symbolism and use of flags.

But in 2025 when Trump began threatening Canada, the national flag is being flown in proud defiance.

“I’m not sure if [the flag] would have recovered had it not been for the sabre-rattling from south of the border and the tariff disputes,” said Pass.

2025 also happens to be the 60th anniversary of the maple leaf flag — making for a timely examination of Canada’s colonial past and identity through an evolving national symbol.

For Flag Day in February, former prime ministers Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper published a joint statement urging Canadians to fly the flag with pride as “never before.”

Here’s what three experts say about the flag’s recent journey through tumultuous times, from its colonial reckoning to its use during a blockade of Ottawa to the defence of sovereignty.

2021: Residential schools

When the suspected unmarked graves of 215 children had just been discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School site, many governments and institutions flew the flag at half-mast.

Canada Day celebrations were cancelled or altered in a number of cities.

In some places like Alderville First Nation and Pickering, Ontario, the flag was taken down entirely.

“It was the banner under which all those government policies were levied against us,” said artist Lou-ann Neel, a descendant of the Mamalilikulla, Da’nax’daxw, Ma’amtagila, ʼNa̱mǥis and Kwagiulth peoples of the Kwakwaka’wakw.

Neel is a residential school survivor, having spent a year at Alberni Residential School. She is 62 and has no recollection of any other Canadian flag than the maple leaf design.

“It’s very trippy to realize that my entire lifetime has been under this flag and its meaning,” she said. “How do I embody or manifest something that represents my entire life, six decades? And what does it all represent?”

Neel was no stranger to working with and challenging the flag, having created a rendition of it during the Idle No More movement with mountains and an abstract raven, done with Kwakwaka’wakw motifs and in the style of a button blanket.

“Because the flag is trademarked, I wanted to take it and superimpose my culture on it,” she said. “It’s a great national symbol that’s recognizable. If it draws people in to look at the point that’s being made or the message I’m sharing, then that’s great.”

The discovery of the suspected graves prompted her to return to the flag again.

“I started to think about what I represented on that flag: that there was no justice, there was no accountability, no integrity, that the freedom it represents is a joke, draped in the blood of our ancestors.”

She added dripping blood to her latest version and turned it upside down, a signal of distress, as other Indigenous activists have, to draw attention to the country’s dark mission of cultural genocide.

She welcomed the reflective tone of citizens grappling with the history of residential schools.

“It’s been a real mix of emotions for me because from a very practical, logical perspective, we’re all here,” said Neel. “We’re all wanting this to be a wonderful place, to be the best place on Earth. But we’ve got some politics to sort out.”

2022: The convoy protests

In early 2022 the flag was a key symbol adopted by the convoy movement and vaccine mandate protesters. As truckers blockaded Ottawa’s downtown with their vehicles, they were draped in maple leaf flags.

“It was such a strange juxtaposition,” said Carmen Celestini, a religious studies lecturer at the University of Waterloo and an expert on right-wing movements.

Just a year ago, some governments were beginning to have a “reflection on who we were and trying to have these conversations with Indigenous communities.”

Flags are often used by protesters to legitimize what they stand for, added Celestini, and that was no different in the convoy protests.

Like Lou-ann Neel and other Indigenous protesters, members of the convoy movement flew the Canadian flag upside down, but used it to register a protest against the government’s vaccine mandates.

At some rallies, the Canadian flag was flown alongside the swastika and the U.S. Confederate flag. Celestini calls it a “convergence” of overlapping right-wing and far-right online movements that are borderless.

The use of the flag by the right-leaning convoy movement is noteworthy because it was a sign that it had “come of age,” said Pass, the vexillologist.

For decades, the flag could not shake off its association with the Pearson Liberals who introduced it.

“The right took a long time to accept the new flag,” said Pass, noting that the old Red Ensign had been used by some conservatives as recently as the 1990s.

“I thought it was really interesting in 2022 that we were seeing a populist movement that tended to the right of the political spectrum embracing the national flag so adamantly and so enthusiastically.”

2025: The Trump threats

And now, the flag has returned in a new way to stand for Canadian sovereignty and resistance.

“I have my phone out regularly, taking pictures of interesting uses of the flag or interesting uses of the national emblem,” said Pass, who lives in the capital region.

On a recent drive to Ottawa, he spotted the flag at a Quickie convenience store as well as a Mobil gas station with a big sign that said the franchise was owned and operated by Canadians.

While these feel like unprecedented times, Pass sees some similarities from another period of Canadian history.

During the 1891 federal election, Conservative John A. Macdonald campaigned on protective tariffs against the United States, what was then a major issue too.

“There was concern that free trade would lead to annexation,” said Pass.

There is a famous patriotic poster of Macdonald wrapped in the Canadian flag of his day, the Red Ensign, with the slogan “The Old Flag. The Old Policy. The Old Leader.”

“There’s a long history of Canadian emblems being used in particular ways, Canadians looking to particular emblems in times of crisis and finding solace or finding unity. I take a certain consolation in the fact that this is not completely unprecedented.”

The red, white and maple leaf flag is a young one that hasn’t lived through as much history as the United States’ or United Kingdom’s, and so is malleable when it comes to meaning. But Pass argues that the simple design of the flag has also paved the way for widespread adoption.

“These elements are very striking and visually interesting, but there isn’t a wealth of historical symbolism associated with them,” he said. “I think the simplicity really is the key to its adaptability.”

The U.S. flag with its stars and stripes symbolism is specific, representing the 50 states and the 13 original colonies. The Union Jack combines three crosses representing three countries united: England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

While the maple leaf has long been viewed as a Canadian emblem, it’s intentionally not a specific maple.

“[It’s] so that it could be used in different regions of the country without being associated too closely with Ontario and Quebec,” said Pass.

Some people today are interpreting the red bands for the two oceans and the two founding settler peoples, but that was not an intention of designer George F.G. Stanley, who simply wanted the flag to be recognizable from afar.

“These past couple of years have really been an object lesson in how its meaning evolves over time, and how a simple design like the Canadian flag can take on all kinds of meanings depending on who’s flying it.”

Some worry the surge of patriotism might overshadow the public conversation that was taking place only a few years ago about Canada’s colonial past.

“While we are fighting for our nation, holding on to our sovereignty and playing the strongman politically against Trump, we still have to recognize our history,” said Celestini. “We can’t fight if we haven’t dealt with some of the things in our past that are cruel and have not been engaged with.”

Lou-ann Neel says she’s the “eternal optimist.”

Her latest artwork, featuring a Kwakwaka’wakw-style flag with messages like “Elbows up” and “Shop local,” has been making the rounds on social media. Neel, a hockey lover, included a warrior woman on one of them with the elbows-up pose.

“I think that Canada and Canada’s officials have an opportunity to keep and make our name good, to make our flag and the name of our flag good,” she said.

“I don’t want to say I’m speaking for everybody, but for me as a survivor, I would wrap myself in that flag if Canada made good on its promises and brought justice to this matter of residential schools.”