Anti-Americanism as Identity: A Canadian Tradition

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Nationalist sentiment in Canada has surged in the wake of U.S. President Trump’s imposition of tariffs and threats of annexation. The patriotic wave proved a major factor in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s electoral victory and has been accompanied by a national rallying against all things American: Canadians have booed the American anthem at sporting events, boycotted U.S. goods, and cancelled trips south. 

Nationalism and anti-Americanism have a long-standing and distinctive connection in Canada, forming a core part of the Canadian identity. The recent anti-American fever is just the latest episode in a Canadian tradition of nationalist anti-Americanism that predates the country itself.

There is an anti-American essentiality of Canadian self-understanding that is tied to the very creation of the nation. The country’s founding myth centres around Loyalist refugees who fled north following the American Revolution, casting Canada as a society built on the conscious rejection of the United States. 

Canadian Confederation in 1867 was driven by desires to create a North American society distinct from the United States, and thereafter was eager to define itself as a proud member of the British Empire. Celebrating British institutions, the monarchy and the Parliamentary system, as symbols of stability and tradition, Canadians cast suspicious eyes at the perceived disorderly mob rule of the American Republic. 

Politicians viewed as representing American ideals or risking Canadian autonomy - be it political, economic, or cultural - have historically not fared well, and it is not uncommon for politicians to be attacked over holding “American-style” positions on issues such as healthcare or guns. Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier was portrayed as disloyal to the British Empire by his Conservative opponents for proposing free trade with the United States,  a stance which cost him the 1911 election. Over a century later, the Liberals framed Conservative Pierre Poilievre as a Trump-style populist during the 2025 election, and he met the same fate.

The idea that free trade would be used as a means for the United States to dominate and annex its northern neighbour loomed until 1988, when Prime Minister Mulroney and President Reagan signed the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Before that agreement proved mutually beneficial, Canadian intellectuals had long espoused anti-American views, fearing that Canadian autonomy would collapse beneath the weight of American power, with Canadian sovereignty disappearing and the country resembling little more than a “branch plant satellite” of the United States, a supplier of raw materials. 

Fears over becoming a vassal state slowly disappeared, but the sentiment lingered as a core aspect of Canadian identity, with Canadians uneasy about the prospects of cultural Americanisation. 

Canada exists in a state of cultural, economic, and political gravitational pull, forever in the shadow of its louder, more assertive, more globally dominant neighbour. The two nations are arguably also the world’s most culturally similar nations: speaking the same language, watching the same sports leagues, and enjoying similar cultural traditions. 

Yet, the United States is a global superpower; Canada is not. Existing as this nation’s culturally similar neighbour can breed contempt and foster insecurities. Forever compared by the rest of the globe, Canadians are often compelled to explain how their nation differs - in essence, forced to defend the existence of their own identity as distinct from another. This has, unsurprisingly, led to assertions of distinctiveness which adopt a culturally chauvinist approach, further cementing anti-Americanism as a core essence of Canadian identity. 

Ask an American to define their nation and nationality, they are unlikely to mention the word “Canada”, yet ask a Canadian, and the likelihood is the United States will be brought up. The dynamic was best described by historian John Bartlet Brebner: “Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States”.

Inevitably, this becomes an obsession with highlighting Canada’s virtues and America’s vices: Americans are characterised as “violent, disorderly, venal” while Canadians are “tolerant, peaceful, bilingual“. America might be powerful, but Canada is peaceful. Not a global superpower, but a moral one.

As such “being Canadian”, and defining what Canada and indeed Canadians are, often amounts to a kind of anxious Dasein: a national identity which defines itself in opposition rather than in presence, a self-constructing identity shaped as much by what it is not as what it is. As such, Canadian selfhood frequently emerges as a “being-in-the-world” fundamentally influenced by “not-being-something-else."

Canada’s is reactive nationalism; Canadian identity remains in persistent opposition to “being American”. 

Canadians of a certain generation will fondly recall a famous 2000 Molson’s Brewery commercial, “I am Canadian: The Rant”, featuring typically Canadian cultural stereotypes: hockey, lumberjacks, tuques. The rant was just a marketing tool using patriotism to sell beer, yet the insecurities over national identity are present: “I have a Prime Minister, not a President, I speak English and French, not American”. It is impossible to define what we are without clarifying what we are not. 

Interestingly, in March 2024, during the build-up to the election, the actor in the commercial released a new video, “We Are Canadian”, which was a defence of Canadian autonomy, a political attack against President Trump: “They confuse our nation for another star on their flag… we are not the 51st anything”. 

“Anti-Trumpism” represents the latest chapter in the oldest tradition of Canadian nationalism: opposition to economic and political domination from the United States. Tariffs have replaced free trade as the main source of neighbourly anxiety, but the old suspicions remain.

Image: Flickr/The White House (Gabriel B. Kotico)

Licence: public domain (US Governmental Work)

No image changes made.