“I think it looks great.  “I think it’s beautiful,” he said.
But this year, he said, is different.
“The sad thing is that sometimes I wonder what people will think if I put up the flag,” Lutra said.  “People might think I’m someone with marginal ideas – like anti – Jews and things like that.”
The country is usually flooded with red and whites on the national holiday, but this year people across Canada are considering their relationship with the Maple Leaf.
The “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations that blocked the streets of Ottawa in February may seem far away in the July sun, but the memory of the protesters dressed in flags, waving them while singing the national anthem and hanging them from their trucks whose horns shouted Day and night are still fresh for the locals.
Ottawa is preparing for a new round of protests, with police saying this Canada Day will be “unprecedented and unique” with a security stance it has never seen before.
“People have made everyone confused about the value, impact and power of the Canadian flag and that is very sad,” Lutra said.
Blaine Chalk said he felt a change in his feelings about the meaning of the flag after the escort protests, in which flags were used for what he called “extreme patriotism”.  As he left his son at a recent birthday party, he saw a truck passing by with Canadian flags and escort-related stickers.
“It matters: The people who are strongest are always the ones waving the flag,” said Chalk, who lives in London, Ont.
But Megan Bal Rigden said it was the complex colonial history of the country itself that made her reluctant to embrace the red and white.
“I do not think I would shake one on my own, regardless of the escort, honestly,” he said.
Ball Rigden said people in her mom’s generation chose the Canadian flag and it is close to their heart because they are representative of the “good things we are”.
She said there was a front yard in her hometown of Windsor, OD, which was “red and white with hundreds of flags”.
“This person does it with nothing but love, but I understand that it can certainly mean a lot more to a lot of people,” he said.
During the 1964 flag debate, Maple Leaf was adopted as a kind of symbolic gesture of French-speaking decolonization to illustrate an equal partnership with English and French Canada, said Paul Litt, a history professor at Carleton University. studying Canadian Nationalism and Culture.
“Conservative reactionary forces were completely opposed to Maple Leaf,” Litt said, adding that they wanted to keep the Red Ensign as the nation’s flag to symbolize Canadian tradition and its ties to Britain.
At the time, the British and French Canadians were called the “two founding peoples,” he said.  “You don’t do that anymore.”
Nearly 60 years later, people in Canada are beginning to see their country and its founding in a different way.
“The passing of time has really changed our view of ourselves,” said Ball Ridgen.
He feels that the flag is representative of a political system that oversaw the colonization of indigenous peoples, marking the discovery of insignificant tombs in residential schools across the country.
“I think people are realizing that we have done a really good job of portraying ourselves as kind and loving in Canada all the time.  “But like everyone else, we went through moments of oppression.”
It is this reckoning with Canada’s past that led Chalk to buy a Native Canadian flag last year, designed by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Curtis Wilson.
“I felt strangely waving the Canadian flag after all these events,” Chalk said.
“I felt strongly that I would rather throw this away.  “I’m still proud to be Canadian, but I think we’ve been leaving Indigenous peoples for a long time.”
“He’s not perfect; but he can try.”
Maple Leaf’s current moment reflects a general problem with public discourse, Litt said, where there are “extremist” factions at both ends of the political spectrum.
While people on the right may appear to be appropriating the flag, as seen with the convoy protesters, he said those on the left “prepared themselves for it” by rejecting many sacred national symbols.
“If they are going to be anti-patriots, then we will be super-patriots,” Litt said of right-wing thinking.
Canada’s national identity has always been controversial and people can strongly identify with the flag because they promote themselves in this imaginary ethnic community, Litt said.
“The reason they love the country so much is because they see the country representing them,” he said.
“When you start receiving these dramatic incidents where there is evidence that maybe Canada means something different than you imagined – an extension of yourself – it has a lot of potential for controversy.”
Ball Ridgen said it understands that the flag can be a harmful symbol for some and a symbol we should be proud of for others.
“Until we analyze it as a country together, I guess we need to have a little ‘Canadian understanding’ of how we all see it,” he said.
“I think there is room for more discussion now.  In that sense, it is possible the escort did something very good for all of us. “
This Canadian Press report was first published on June 30, 2022.
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This story was created with the financial support of Meta and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.