Don’t Poke The Beaver

By Will Novosedlik

Over the years, brand and market researchers have asked the question, “When you hear the word ‘Canada’, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

The response is usually ‘ice’ or ‘cold’ or ‘hockey’. Indeed, the true north strong and free is a cold, unforgiving place with a long, dark winter, so we had to invent a pastime that leveraged the weather. Hockey fit the bill. It’s almost as old as we are. We played our first organized game in 1875, in Montreal, only 8 years after we became a nation. The rest is hockey history.

But there’s another word that keeps popping up: ‘nice’. The perception is that we are a polite, almost deferential people. Comedian Jon Stewart referred to us as America’s ‘labradoodle allies’. Do we have the swagger of our American cousins? Do we start wars? Do you see us toppling democratically elected governments and propping up business-friendly dictators all over the world? Do we have a special room in our basements for gun storage? The collective answer is no.

Those are some of the reasons the world thinks we’re so easy to get along with. But like all nations (and many brands) we have a dark side that we don’t talk about. For instance, America might start wars, but we help fight them. Iraq and Afghanistan anyone? Like America, we are a settler colonial state, as evidenced by the historic cultural genocide and dispossession we have perpetrated on Indigenous people. We operate some of the dirtiest industries known to man (the tar sands). We sell weapons and components to some pretty unscrupulous regimes. Saudi Arabia comes to mind. We sell spyware to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to enable the tracking and deportation of migrants and asylum seekers. We may be non-threatening on the outside, but we can be pretty reprehensible on the inside. Brands are very good at masking complexity and contradiction, and Brand Canada is no exception.

As reported in the WSJ this past weekend, a potato farmer from Maine said he wasn’t as worried about Fentanyl coming across the border as he was about moose . . . along with too many cheap Canadian potatoes.

Despite our sins, there are many Americans clamouring to get up here to escape the chaos created by the gangsters in the White House, an unholy posse of grifters, white supremacists and Christian fascists hellbent on building a new American reich. Left-leaning Americans may believe we’re more civilized (we are) and that our country is a safer, more attractive place to live (it is), but Canada will provide them little respite from the economic pain about to be imposed by Trump's economy-choking tariffs.

Overnight, a nation that normally avoids overt demonstrations of patriotism has torn off its smiley face and bared its fangs. The internet is flooded with a deluge of pro-Canadian, anti-American screeds and sentiments the likes of which we’ve never seen. Voices on both sides of the border – angry Canadians and sympathetic Americans – are fuming.

Canada’s win in the Four Nations Face Off couldn’t have come at a more providential moment. Our brand was being insulted and degraded, and our boys humbled the opponent. Could this be a transformative moment for brand Canada?

A common refrain right now is that this is exactly the kick in the ass that Canada needs. That we’ve gotten too complacent with the security umbrella America provides. That we’ve become too dependent on one customer for our goods and services. That our economies are far too intertwined.

Well there’s a kick in the ass, and then there’s a 25% tariff on essentials like steel and aluminum. That’s not just a kick in the ass. It’s more like that scene in 300 where King Leonidas kicks the Persian emissary into a fathomless pit.

Thank goodness we make our own aluminum. Our beer will always have a home. But what of der Donald’s diet Cokes? Maybe we should send him a sippy cup.

That kick in the ass has revealed to us a part of ourselves we forgot was there. Canadians: mild-mannered on the outside, ferociously angry dam-builders, tree-fellers and stick-wielders on the inside.

Except for Kevin O’Leary, everybody agrees that an American take-over is a bad idea. Rest assured, if it happened, Canada would be the last nail in the coffin of democracy.

We’re not going to let that happen, are we?

Will Novosedlik is a Toronto-based writer, designer and editor. He is known for a critical perspective on the socioeconomic impact of design, advertising and marketing.