A hockey puck with the Canadian flag at a National Flag of Canada Day ceremony, one day before the official observance of Flag Day, on the Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa on Feb. 14.Patrick Doyle/Reuters
The Canadian flag has taken shifts being divisive since its inception. Still, on its 60th anniversary Saturday, hockey fans and politicians of all stripes seemed to rally around the banner as the country faces the United States on the ice and in an escalating trade war.
National Flag of Canada Day, celebrated on Feb. 15 every year since 1996, felt more relevant to many in 2025 with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening both Canada’s economy and sovereignty.
In Montreal, ahead of a highly anticipated U.S.-Canada hockey game on Saturday, some fans felt a surge of national pride. “I think it’s more important than ever,” Grant MacDonald said of Flag Day.
He and his son, Brett, travelled from Sydney, N.S., to see the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament games at the Bell Centre arena.
“I hadn’t given it much thought, to tell you the truth, in previous years, but en route here we purchased a Canadian flag and a Nova Scotia flag to bring to the hockey series,” Mr. MacDonald said.
“I think everybody is getting a real shot of patriotism. I think it’s a good thing.”
In recent weeks, Canadian fans have booed the U.S. national anthem before NHL games throughout the country after Mr. Trump announced potentially crippling tariffs and continued to muse about making Canada the 51st state, awakening in many Canucks a patriotic élan.
Of course, it hasn’t always been that way.
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The Maple Leaf was unofficially preceded by the Red Ensign, with its prominent Union Jack in the top left corner, never popular in francophone Quebec. When Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson promised a new Canadian flag in time for the centenary celebrations of 1967, and in tune with rising Quebec nationalism that disdained British symbols, it unleashed a bitter national debate.
Around 3,500 submissions reached the parliamentary committee tasked with choosing an alternative. Some Canadians were appalled that the final selection – designed by the Royal Military College dean George Stanley and refined by the graphic artist Jacques St-Cyr – made no explicit reference to the country’s British and French heritage.
Others saw the flag’s virtues right away, long before it was stitched onto travellers’ backpacks. “The single maple leaf presents an image of dignified simplicity,” said Senator David Croll, according to the Senate’s website. “It augurs well for Canada’s future.”
Since then, the Maple Leaf has become a “rallying point” for the country in moments of stress, grief, and jubilation, said historian J.D.M. Stewart. “I don’t think even Pearson could have predicted how much people love this flag.”
He ran through a litany of great moments in the history of the flag: draped over the coffin of the Unknown Soldier repatriated from France, flying behind Mario Lemieux after Canada won hockey gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, unfurled massively over the heads of attendees of the Montreal Love-In before the 1995 Quebec independence referendum.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien created Flag Day shortly after the federalist side narrowly won that vote on national unity, part of a widespread effort in those years to expand the visibility of national symbols after such a close call.
Mr. Chrétien and four other former prime ministers – Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper – invited Canadians to “show the flag as never before” on Saturday.
“In the face of threats and insults from Donald Trump, Canadians have come together to express their love for our country and their determination to defend Canada’s values and our independence,” they said in a joint statement. “Canada, the true north, strong and free, the best country in the world, is worth celebrating and fighting for.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also wished Canadians “a happy Flag Day” on social media Saturday. “Nowhere else I’d rather call home,” he wrote in a separate post.
King Charles III said in a statement on social media that the Canadian flag “has become internationally recognised as a symbol of a proud, resilient and compassionate country.”
“For my own part, it is a symbol that never fails to elicit a sense of pride and admiration,” he wrote.
The Maple Leaf recently went through another rocky shift as it became entangled in divisive political debates. In May, 2021, Mr. Trudeau ordered the flag lowered on all federal buildings after the discovery of what were believed to be the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in B.C. The flags controversially remained at half-mast until that November.
Around the same time, protestors against pandemic lockdowns began prominently displaying the flag, including flying it upside down, traditionally a symbol of distress that in this case was meant to suggest Canada was in crisis because of government restrictions. This culminated in the so-called 2022 “Freedom Convoy,” a three-week-long protest in downtown Ottawa that was shut down by the federal government’s unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, on the campaign trail, looked to strike a different tone on Saturday at Ottawa’s downtown convention centre, abandoning his party’s oft-repeated phrase “Canada is broken.” At a rally with hundreds of supporters who were encouraged to eschew the traditional Conservative blue for red and white, Mr. Poilievre celebrated the country, his podium pronouncing the new slogan “Canada First.”
“Sometimes, it does take a threat to remind us what we have, what we could lose and what we could become,” he said. “The unjustified threats of tariffs and 51st statehood of Donald Trump have united our people to defend the country we love.”
Facing threats, Canada sees renewed sense of pride in flag
Mr. Stewart, the historian, said people can forget what the flag symbolizes. “They get caught up in their causes and forget about its real purpose,” he said. The provocations of Mr. Trump have revived a latent patriotism in Canadians that Mr. Stewart believes will restore lustre to the Maple Leaf.
At his home in Toronto, he has a flag that once flew over the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill. The flag is switched out every weekday, unless holidays or weather prevent it, and Canadians can apply to receive the used ones. When Mr. Stewart applied, the wait-list was seven years.
Now, the application is online, and the wait-list is over a century long.
“The Canadian flag is returning to its rightful and steadfast place as the beacon for the country,” he said.
with a file from The Canadian Press