{"id":102963,"date":"2025-07-02T12:51:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T16:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=102963"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:44:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T21:44:41","slug":"opinion-paul-hamilton-and-tristan-sheppard-discuss-symbols-and-growing-canadian-nationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/07\/opinion-paul-hamilton-and-tristan-sheppard-discuss-symbols-and-growing-canadian-nationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Paul Hamilton and Tristan Sheppard discuss symbols and growing Canadian nationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Paul Hamilton, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, and Tristan Sheppard (BA ’23, MA ’24), a Brock University Political Science master’s graduate, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The recent resurgence of Canadian nationalism is a response to explicit threats made by United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his desire to make Canada the 51st American state.<\/p>\n

Canadian flag sales have skyrocketed, informal and formal\u00a0boycotts of American goods\u00a0are continuing and Canadians are being\u00a0urged to stay home\u00a0and spend their vacation dollars domestically.\u00a0Even in Qu\u00e9bec, pro-Canadian sentiments are evident.\u00a0Canadian nationalism is back.<\/p>\n

Yet only a decade ago, the newly elected Justin Trudeau labelled Canada\u00a0the first \u201cpost-national nation\u201d in an interview with The New York Times.\u00a0In essence, the prime minister suggested, Canada was moving beyond nationalism to some new phase of social identity. Nationalism, like a step in the launch of a spacecraft, would be jettisoned now that it was a vestigial and outdated feature of Canadian society.<\/p>\n

As we argue in a recently presented paper to be published soon, Canadians are nowhere near either a homogeneous, popularly held identity, nor are they \u201cbeyond nationalism\u201d as if it were an outdated hairstyle.<\/p>\n

Instead, Canadian steps toward a united, widely held nationalism continue to be stymied by both substantial constitutional issues (Qu\u00e9bec, western alienation, Indigenous aspirations to self-determination) but also by battles over banal symbols of national identity. Canadians are, in the words of journalist Ian Brown,\u00a0\u201ca unity of contradictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The importance of symbols<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his influential book,\u00a0Banal Nationalism, British social science scholar Michael Billig highlighted the role of symbols like stamps, currency and flags to identify barely noticed transmitters of national consciousness.<\/p>\n

Writing in 1995, at\u00a0a time of ethnic nationalist resurgence\u00a0in the former Yugoslavia, Billig contrasted the understated, reserved nationalism of citizens of established states like Canada with the dangerous, passionate expressions of nationalism in the Balkans.<\/p>\n

This genteel nationalism is barely noticed much of the time, but proposals to alter national symbols arouse debate \u2014 like during\u00a0the great Canadian flag debate\u00a0of the mid-1960s \u2014 and expose deep emotional attachments. Canadians, too, are nationalists.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re also citizens of a liberal democracy where nationalistic narratives compete to define and unite the nation. Societies evolve and generational change can lead to new symbols reflecting changing values. The historical episodes of discontent pertaining to national symbols show how Canadian society has evolved since its\u00a0drift away from Britain after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

During the flag debate, Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson said Canada needed a new flag that would present a united nation rather than a confusing amalgamation of different people. Conservative Leader John Diefenbaker, on the other hand, argued Canada should be \u201call Canadian and all British\u201d during the debate,\u00a0adding that any Canadian who disagreed should \u201cbe denounced.\u201d<\/p>\n

The leaders could not agree, with Diefenbaker opting for something like the status quo and Pearson for a complete redesign that would represent all Canadians, regardless of national heritage. In a 1964\u00a0La Presse\u00a0article on the debate, columnist Guy Cormier crudely voiced Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s concerns that Pearson\u2019s handling of the flag debate was an attempt to \u201cartificially inseminate\u201d his agenda on the province. The\u00a0Philadelphia Evening Bulletin\u00a0reported on the debate, declaring that \u201ctinkering with a nation\u2019s flag is sort of like playing volleyball with a hornets nest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mountie symbolism<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Canada became increasingly more multicultural in the 1980s, another symbol became the centre of controversy.\u00a0A Sikh entering the RCMP wanted to be able to wear a turban instead of the traditional Stetson.<\/p>\n

Despite government and RCMP support, public opinion was mixed. Racist lapel pins were sold with the message\u00a0\u201cKeep the RCMP Canadian\u201d\u00a0as some argued the old uniform should remain and that new recruits should adapt to it.<\/p>\n

While few Canadians knew much about the design and history of the RCMP uniform, almost all Canadians consider it an iconic representation of Canada. Changes to it represent a threat to some, inclusion for others.<\/p>\n

Changes to the anthem, passport<\/strong><\/p>\n

Changes to\u00a0O Canada, the national anthem, have been proposed over the past decades. Recently, a more inclusive version was drafted,\u00a0changing \u201cin all thy sons command\u201d to \u201call of us command.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative MPs and some television pundits\u00a0argued the change wasn\u2019t necessary and the anthem doesn\u2019t belong to a political party.\u00a0Opponents argued that most people aren\u2019t offended by the anthem\u2019s lyrics,\u00a0the anthem wasn\u2019t broken and was not in need of fixing.\u00a0Ultimately, the change was made, with great praise from some and vexation from others.<\/p>\n

Removing images of the late Terry Fox in 2023 from the Canadian passport, a document few think about until checking its expiry date before a vacation, caused significant uproar.<\/p>\n

Other images from Canadian history were also removed, but Fox\u2019s removal was most notable since he was someone most Canadians consider the embodiment of a Canadian hero.<\/p>\n

The response to these changes ranged from mild \u2014 with those\u00a0arguing that Canada needs more Terry Fox, not less,\u00a0\u2014 to furious, as some accused\u00a0Trudeau of being out of touch with Canadians\u00a0and a\u00a0\u201cfault finder-in-chief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Far from trivial, these arguments over national symbols reveal how deeply some Canadians are attached to them. The nature of Canadian identity and nationalism will continue to be dated and contested. In that respect, Canadians are no different than the citizens of any other country.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Hamilton, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, and Tristan Sheppard (BA ’23, MA ’24), a Brock Political Science master’s graduate, recently published a piece in The Conversation about the role of symbols amid growing Canadian nationalism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,6,38],"tags":[4104,522,4247,42,31,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102963"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102978,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102963\/revisions\/102978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}