Chelsea Metzger refused to pretend she was Canadian.
It was the first time that an American tourist in upstate New York has resorted to lying about her nationality, only after a fierce conflict with Canadians and an astonishing exchange with local taxi drivers during a holiday in the Dominican Republic earlier this year.
Metzger, 33, and her fiancé were in the French Canadian Bar in Elpueverit in February. This marked the final of the 4 Nations face-off hockey tournament between Canada and the US.
When the American team scored the goal, Metzger’s only “Woo, America” didn’t go well.
“A Canadian couple screamed at me and said that America is selfish and ruining everything for Canada and the world,” Metzger told CNN. “The girl started crying and I don’t think Americans realize that what’s going on is really affecting us here.”
Metzger explained that he tried to protect himself and did not vote for Trump. However, the temper burned under the influence of alcohol. Eventually, the situation escalated and the couple came back to apologize in a series of shots.
“I told her I got it. As someone who didn’t vote for this, it affects everyone. We all feel the effects of it. Unfortunately, the only thing we can do now is ride together.”
While trying to flag a taxi during the same trip, the local driver mistakenly mistakenly supposes him for Canadians until they corrected them. Instead of picking up them, he ran off, “Okay, have a good day.”
So for a few weeks, Metzger introduced himself as a Canadian.
Maple Leaf has long been a powerful diplomatic accessory for Canadian travelers known to sew Canadian flags into bags to distinguish them from Americans.
However, over the past few months, some US tourists have revived decades-old practices pose as Canadians in order to avoid anti-American sentiment overseas under the Trump administration. They hide behind maple leaves, mistakenly identifying themselves as Canadians and displaying Canadian flags in a phenomenon known as flag jacking.
And the Canadians are furious.
“For some reason, Americans think we are their backup passports. It’s the world’s first double action moral absolute. Apply gently and see the shame disappear,” says Todd Muffin, a Canadian cultural commentator who raised the flag.
The message of muffins barbed wire spares no one – not even liberal, progressive Americans who protest against trying to pass themselves as Canadians because they don’t vote for Trump and feel embarrassed or unsafe.
“And we get you. Many of you are out on the streets and fighting for better things. Some of you are trying to travel without screaming at customs. We get it,” says Muffin.
But the Canadian flag is not a shield or an invisible cloak, he continues. “Calling yourself as a Canadian is not a safety move. It’s performance art.”
It appears that the days when Canadians offer sympathetic shoulders as “emotional supportive Canadians” to their non-Maga neighbours, an online trend that emerged after the 2024 Trump election.
Trump’s repeated, unaddressed tariff wars annexed Canada, threatened it to the 51st state, alleviated the obsession of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, strengthened Canadians against their neighbors, and rekindled the forms of Canadian nationalism that have not been seen for decades.
“Outside threats stimulate nationalist responses,” explains Robert Schelzer, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “It’s what sociologists call collective effervescent, a spontaneous foaming to the surface of emotions.”
In Canada, this collective bubble appears in booing the American national anthem at sporting events, boycotting US travel and American-made products, and waving the Canadian flag, doubling what may feel like an unpleasant truth for both Canadians and Americans.
“Canadian nationalism has an anti-American element at its core,” says Shelzer. It explains that emotions associated with nationalism are as powerful as those associated with religion.
“So, when Americans pretend to be Canadians, I understand why they feel this national pride and why people who are stimulated by external threats respond emotionally to it.”
Earlier this year, Trudeau defined Canada’s national identity by what is not.
“Canadians are extremely proud to be Canadian,” he told CNN’s Jake Tupper in January. “One of the easiest ways we define ourselves is, ‘Well, we’re not Americans.’
This is why Canadians are particularly furious at the notion that Americans hijack the Canadian flag and claim it as theirs. Online discourse offers a long list of reasons why infuriated Canadians are presenting this practice (some Americans are hacking travel), or laughing as harmless jokes, but offensive and arrogant.
It’s cosplay. Cultural theft and appropriation; laughing the Canadian flag. It ruins the goodwill of Canada and the reputation of countries around the world. It’s a scam. Arrogant; they say he has ward disease and is entitled.
Some argue that the practice is riding between the stones of Canada’s historic connections with countries such as the Netherlands, which were released during World War II and by the Canadian forces, where Canadians are particularly well-respected.
And that’s ironic in light of American exceptionalism. If America is the greatest country on the planet, Canadians ask online, why do Americans hide their nationality and hide behind another flag?
“I saw many Americans talking about international travel as things continued to be entrusted to the US. This idea of cosplaying Canadians came up a lot,” Muffin told CNN from his home in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
“I tried to speak up to what many Canadians have thought for generations. We’re not a cape to leave people who are confused by the fact that you’re from a particular country. Canada is a country. We’re not a costume shop.”
Many travelers who backpacked Europe in the 1990s and 2000s can guarantee the phenomenon of some young Americans posing as Canadians. The act of condemnation was particularly common in the 2000s amid the unpopular foreign policy of America and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraqi countries.
In an episode of “The Simpsons” in 2005, set in Italy, Lisa Simpson sews the Canadian flag into her backpack.
That’s what Chelsea Metzger did this year. Creating a backstory wasn’t difficult for her. Over the years, she made several Canadian friends during her month-long trip to the Dominican Republic, including friends from the small town of Janetville. The town of Ontario seemed like an incredible cover story and worked most of the time.
Another American in Michigan told CNN that during her trip in Greece she and her friends lied to the waiter and told her they were Canadian after being sneered on multiple occasions during the Euro holiday this summer.
When he asked where in Canada she came from, her friend blew Ontario off. What they didn’t expect was that the waiters knew more about the state than they did and began to get excited and upset from places they knew nothing. Their plans were quickly unraveled.
“We then decided not to do it again because it was pretty troublesome not being able to back it up, and it was like a ridiculous idea,” said Grace, 22, a Republican, who asked to be identified only in her name, fearing backlash.
But for Canadians like Muffins, the practice of posing like Canadians is problematic as it puts Canada’s global reputation violently at risk.
“There are very few places in this world where you can parachute by saying you’re from Canada and not welcome,” he said. “The same cannot be said for Americans. The solution is not to repair your own home, come and wear clothes.”
