Mandryk: Now, more than ever, is the time to rally around the flag

Article content There’s irony in the notion that wrapping ourselves with the Canadian flag seems to be the consensus approach to best survive U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on our sovereignty.

After all, wrapping one’s self in a flag has been the source of many of the world’s ills — up to and including the current world ill that is Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. But perhaps we do need to fight fire with fire. Feel free to wrap the maple leaf around you as make the out-of-Canadian-character statement of pride in where you live and the collective values of our nation.



It beats what we’ve done in the past, which is to use our flag — and perhaps others’ — to advance parochial political beliefs. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the red and white maple leaf logo as our flag. Few recall the 1965 hullabaloo known as “ the Great Flag Debate ” in which John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservatives demanded a symbol more reflective of this country’s “founding races” (read: incorporating Britain’s Union Jack to appease old-stock voters).

As earlier suggested, unfurl a flag and you’re bound to find a political agenda ...

or at least, a lot of misplaced sentiments. But today’s subtle difference —and, yes, at times this issue has its subtleties — is the difference between playing politics with patriotism and true patriotism. In Canada today, the latter is desperately needed.

Recently, all five living f ormer Canadian prime ministers have urged Canadians to fly the maple leaf — not only as part of the flag anniversary celebrations, but also in light of Trump’s 51st state threats. It’s an idea drawing strong support — likely because of the times we live in, but also likely because it’s being presented in a non-partisan way by a political variety of former prime ministers who recognize the gravity of the situation. In fact, one of the more helpful things we’ve heard of late is former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper saying “If I was still prime minister, I would be prepared to impoverish the country and not be annexed, if that was the option we’re facing.

” It’s the kind of political courage we all need to demonstrate right now. We’ve been given a wakeup call. Waving a Canadian flag right now may show we are not sleeping through the alarm.

If Trump thinks we are vulnerable to takeover, it’s probably because Canadians — too often caught up in our divisive politics — have given him reason to believe this. We have ourselves to blame. Far too often, we have been too eager to instead hoist the local provincial flag — often, in a statement that local/regional interests are a greater priority than national needs.

The greatest offender is Quebec, which has got away with this for decades while eagerly taking everything it can get from the national government. But in places like Saskatchewan we are guilty of this as well. We now have a policy that the provincial flag must be flown at schools — a nonsense policy that seems largely about finding ways to prevent Pride or other flags from appearing in front of schools.

And Premier Scott Moe has also been the author of the silliness that Saskatchewan, too, is a nation within a nation . Today, Moe would provide a far greater patriotic service by instead taking on far-right nutters in this province with an unequivocal message that he and everyone else vehemently oppose their MAGA maple talk of joining the U.S.

As people long struggling to define our national identity, our quiet patriotism hasn’t always done us favours. It isn’t doing us any favours right now, as our former prime ministers seem to be pointing out. But we can change that.

Sixty years after its creation, we need to show our flag is something more than what you childishly fly upside down to show your distain for Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or vaccines. It represents us as Canadians. And, today, that means something.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Our websites are your destination for up-to-the-minute Saskatchewan news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and leaderpost.

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