The residents of Almonte, Ont., were elbows up before it was cool.
The picturesque town in the Ottawa Valley is named for a Mexican general who fought valiantly when the U.S. invaded his country in 1847. Canada had its own border dispute with the Americans at the time – some Yankee politicians wanted to seize what is now British Columbia – so a group of Anglo farmers and mill workers seem to have felt a brief surge of solidarity with a Spanish-speaking statesman named Juan.
In a political climate not so far, far away, 170 years later, the town is feeling just as feistily patriotic. Another crop of expansionist U.S. leaders openly fantasizes about annexing our home and native land, and again the people of Almonte are feeling defensive. For Canada Day this year, the town will be covered in Maple Leaf flags as a defiant display of national pride.
Almonte is the birthplace of James Naismith, who invented basketball while living in the United States.
July 1 is always a big deal in Almonte, now part of the municipality of Mississippi Mills. The pancake breakfasts, face painting and Cancon-heavy open-air concerts befit a town so wholesome-looking it is regularly used as the backdrop of Hallmark movies. But this year, there’s a sharper wind making those Maple Leaves flap on their poles.
“I think the feel is going to be markedly different,” said the mayor, Christa Lowry. “Almontonians are no different than other Canadians – we’re pretty quiet and reserved – but we’re also fiercely proud and protective, and when we’re threatened that side comes shining through.”
Welcome to the first elbows up Canada Day. Across the country, the usual red-white-and-red celebrations are taking on a more combative, more assertive tone, in a year when U.S. President Donald Trump’s annexation threats and tariff war have sharpened Canada’s collective sense of self.
In Pictou County, N.S., music lovers can take in an Elbows Up concert featuring Shania Twain and Neil Young covers. In Clarksburg, Ont., there’s a musical barbecue event called Elbows Up on the Patio. Crocheted teapot covers burned with nationalist indignation at the Elbows Up craft market in suburban Ottawa on Saturday.
Only a few years ago, Canada Day appeared to be a shadow of itself.
After the discovery of potential unmarked graves at former residential schools in 2021, some communities cancelled their celebrations, including cities such as Victoria. The flag flew at half-mast on federal buildings for months. The Maple Leaf was embraced as a symbol by the divisive and highly politicized trucker convoy during the pandemic. The postnational state that Justin Trudeau heralded early in his premiership seemed not so far off.
And then Mr. Trump was re-elected. The phrase – the very concept – “51st state” entered the lexicon. The Tkachuk brothers started a bunch of hockey fights during the 4 Nations Face-Off. Connor McDavid put them to bed in overtime. Our elbows went up.
'Elbows up' rallies took off before and during the spring federal election as politicians debated how to respond to the Trump tariff threat.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
So much has changed in the Canadian psyche, so fast, that it can be hard to remember there was a time, about six months ago, when the concept of a Canadian psyche would have elicited snorts of derision from some quarters. No one denies there is a national hivemind any more. You can feel it buzzing with anger every time the U.S. President addresses us. You could hear its drone outside Rogers Place during the anthems when the Oilers were playing for the Cup.
Katharine Casey hopes to channel it in a coast-to-coast-to-coast singalong of O Canada on July 1. The human resources strategist from Victoria – where Canada Day was cancelled back in 2021 – is enlisting Canadians to sing the anthem together at 10 a.m. PT in an effort she’s calling All Together, Canada. More than 3,000 people have already signed up.
She was inspired by the pot-banging for health care workers during COVID-19 and wanted to bring that sense of collective expression to this strikingly patriotic moment. The revelations of atrocities against Indigenous children had drained her sense of national pride, but today she has reconciled, as it were, the guilt of colonial crimes past with a renewed love of country.
“I felt like I couldn’t sing the anthem. I didn’t know what it meant to be a Canadian any more,” she said. “But with all the talk of tariffs, the talk of 51st state, it reminded me of what it meant to be a Canadian. It meant being strong and coming together.”
From far and wide, Canadians have taken up Ms. Casey on her idea. Some will be giving their full-throated O Canada from deep in the bush, others from cottage docks. At least one person in Nunavut is planning to join in. With separatist sentiment rising in Alberta, some have warned Ms. Casey that no Albertans will take part, but she believes the province is more than its provisionally patriotic Premier.
“There are louder voices than Danielle Smith’s,” she said.
National unity issues won’t disappear on July 1. In Quebec, the real fête nationale happens a week earlier, on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, when public celebrations are always bigger and more boisterous. Montreal’s Canada Day parade is being cancelled for the second year in a row, in fact, because of potential logistical issues tied to municipal worker strikes and construction. The sovereigntist Parti Québécois continues to lead in polls despite an increase in pro-Canadian feeling in the province during the federal election campaign.
This is still Canada, land of ambiguity and compromise and the scything down of tall poppies. The upsurge in nationalism registers in polls, but hardly as a tidal wave: A recent Environics Institute survey found the share of Canadians who say they are “very attached” to Canada increased from 51 to 57 per cent since last year – from an infinitesimal to a merely small majority.
Back in Almonte, they will be flying their flags proudly on July 1, but what about grander gestures? In the 1850s, when the U.S. was invoking Manifest Destiny to expand its territory across the continent and Canada was in the crosshairs, the locals made a dramatic show of anti-American patriotism (one of our favourite kinds), by naming themselves after a hero of Mexican diplomacy.
So what about renaming the town after a contemporary Mexican leader standing up to the Yankee bully today? Sheinbaum, Ont., anyone? Ms. Lowry demurred. “This whole situation has really ignited local pride, national pride, nationalism in a way that I’ve never seen before in my lifetime,” she said, before adding: “I don’t know if we’re up for changing the name.”
Oh, Almonte. O Canada.
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