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Writer and former theology student Kyle Schilling says he moved from Los Angeles to Canada during the first Trump administration to escape toxic politics in America. She never saw herself as the kind of person who hung a huge flag over the front of her house.
But after Donald Trump was re-elected last fall and began threatening to turn America’s famous, polite, peaceful Northern neighbors into “No. 51,” Schilling’s double citizen husband spread out the giant red and white maple leaf banners in his homes all around the world.
“When he did it, I went, ‘Yeah!” said Schilling.
She’s not the only one who feels that way.
Instead of inviting Canadians, Trump’s threat to annex their country has unleashed a wave of enthusiasm from the people, unparalleled in their living memory. Canadians have refused to buy American products, cancelled travel plans south of the border, and even booed the US national anthem before a professional hockey game.
And instead of feeling threatened by backlash against their hometown, many former American Pats living in Canada are enthusiastically in Die with their neighbors.
Nanci Burns, a retired social worker born in the US and spent years with her family in California before moving to Ottawa, said she was surprised by the transformation of public opinion.
“I’ve never seen this level of patriotism. Everyone is a pro-Canada and I’m very afraid of losing their country,” Burns said. “Where we go, it’s a universal voice.”
Canadian fans provoked American fans before the championship game of the 2025 Four Nations Face-Off Hockey Tournament.
(Charles Krupa/Application)
Burns recalls seeing the recent Fornations Face-Off Hockey Tournament, in which Canadian and American teams face each other head-on. Three fights broke out on the ice in the first nine seconds after Montreal fans booed the US national anthem before the first match.
“We felt like gladiators,” said the grey-haired retiree with a laugh, who was otherwise softly spoken. “Just hash it on the link.”
The American players definitely won the battle they started, while the Canadians won the tournament.
A few months after Trump’s pointy threat began, he hasn’t fully revealed what he really wants to achieve.
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President Trump’s threat of trade war and leading Canada to the folding of the US created a troublesome moment for Americans living north of the border, making Canadians a flag-waving patriot.
In January, Trump told reporters he was considering using “economic power” to Canada, and announced in February that there would be a large number of shift tariffs on Canadian goods coming to the US.
He called the borders “artificially drawn lines,” reminding Canadians of their dependence on the United States for military protection. He said since then, Canadians could not assume that it was always true and have repeated how much they hoped their country would become the “51st state” of America.
Is it just an exaggeration and a position of active opening negotiations ahead of the international trade war he set up against his friends and enemies as well? Does he actually intend to use American economic power against sovereign states to plunder rich natural resources? Or, as some have suggested, he was dashingly trolling Canada’s dashing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?
Whatever Trump’s motivation, Canadians take the tacit threat very seriously, and are much more zinc-plated than most outsiders could possibly have predicted.
Ottawa grocery stores use the maple leaf symbol to signal shoppers that their products are being prepared in Canada.
(Justintan/Canadian media via AP)
Perhaps the most obvious influence is the sudden revival of Canada’s previous MO death Liberal Party.
A few months ago, after polls desperately delayed and seemingly doomed to the upcoming federal election, Trudeau announced he had resigned as prime minister, leaving his party in control to a relatively unexplained former banker. Conservatives whose leaders were branded as “Maple Magazine,” looked doomed to win a landslide victory.
But then Trump began with the threat of the 51st state, and before Canadian conservatives knew what hit them, “Maple Magazine” became the most radioactive label on the land. Today, the liberals and Trudeau successors have surged 25 points in the vote, appearing to be heading for a shocking future victory later this month.
Trump’s rhetoric “puts fear of God into people here,” Burns said.
Canadians inevitably spend a lot of time analyzing political drama in their neighboring economic and military powers, but it would be safe to say that most Americans have little time to think about Canada. As far as most of us know, they are all on the same side.
You cannot go far from the truth. Despite the country’s enormous land mass, 90% of Canadian people live within 150 miles of the US border. So they stretch in a narrow band that runs 5,500 miles from east to west. This means that people at one end know little about the other. And, not surprising, Canada is fighting and divided just like developed countries around the world.
Toronto and Montreal – their neighbors – are attacked by rivals dating back to the 18th century war between England and France. The Atlantic states have fallen into a hard economic situation, amplified by the collapse of offshore fishing stocks, with some of their fellow Canadians being considered a kind of frozen appalachian. And many of the beautiful, prosperous Vancouver stare at their contested compatriots, across thousands of miles of towering mountains and almost empty plains.
Despite the differences, the US President’s ef fuss makes them laugh at their relative weaknesses, implying that they are all bundles of aspiring Americans.
Canadian protesters gather near the US-Canadian border in Buffalo, New York
(Adrian Klaus/Applications)
True to their stereotypes, Canadians remained carefully and polite to the American foreigners interviewed for this story, but there were some nasty moments.
Graham Dodds, a political science teacher at Concordia University in Montreal, said he saw “a little rise in ribs without goodness from friends.”
Gabriel Polas, a San Diego native and studying at the University of British Columbia, said he and a friend had recently attended a concert and someone on stage challenged the Americans in their audience to raise their hands. It was all so much fun, Polas believed, but even so, none of the Americans he was with had chosen himself.
Schilling, 53, said she was shocked and mystical by Trump’s threat, but never demonized by her Canadian neighbor. They can distinguish between the US presidential administration and individual American citizens, especially those who have chosen to move to Canada.
Schilling thwarted the policies and actions she disliked in 2020, in response to the psychological shattering of life in Los Angeles, homelessness, gun violence, and the fact that half of the country voted for Trump. Every day, you lived in the United States “crushing a little bit of your soul” and felt like “not hurting it all the time.”
Her new neighbors have not bothered her about Trump’s threat, but Silling said, some of her older ones on Silver Lake are touched on regularly.
“My American friend is very jealous right now,” she said with a laugh. “Are you sure you have a room in your house?”
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