First Flag Day event didn't quite go as planned

Generally speaking, we Canadians aren’t as jingoistic as our neighbours to the south.

I mean, we love our country, but waving flags? That’s for Canada Day—and even then for many, it’s a sheepishly shy motion: the muted physical equivalent to singing (or almost whispering) our national anthem.

We’re humble. Nothing wrong with that.

On occasion, however, and usually when it involves sports, Canadians can puff out their chests and paint their nations’ colours on their faces with the best of them: I give you Vancouver 2010 when Sid the Kid scored the Golden Goal as a good example.

There’s no doubt Canada’s excellence in hockey invites its patrons to be more patriotic (and downing a few Molsons doesn’t hurt, eh?).

We’ll see and hear that tonight in Montreal when Canada hosts the US in the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament. They’re going to have a ball in Montreal.

With tensions between the two nations raised to rarified levels as one of their governments (I’m too polite to say which one) recklessly abandons longstanding and well-working trade agreements and boldly threatens to absorb the other nation as a 51st state, the bluster blowing in from DC seems to have resulted in a high pressure system of patriotism in the northern sky.

It will be interesting to see if that transfers to the streets on this national Flag Day, which commemorates the first time the maple leaf was raised on Parliament Hill in 1965, replacing the Red Ensign, the de facto national flag Canada adopted in 1868.

Earlier this week, Capital Daily ran a story about eBay and Amazon selling mugs, hats, T-shirts, and the like promoting the Great White North as part of the US of A—and we received more than a few missives saying, ‘No, way, San Jose.’

“It is time to boycott Amazon to remove this JUNK from their inventory,” one reader said in an email.

Former PMs unite to celebrate Canada

Last week, former prime ministers Stephen Harper, Joe Clark, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Kim Campbell put out a joint statement, one that crossed partisan lines and had Liberals and Conservatives aligned, encouraging Canadians to fly the flag today.

It was a thinly veiled signal to US President Donald Trump to politely take his 51st-state idea and build a wall around it.

“The five of us come from different parties,” the statement read. “We’ve had our share of battles in the past. But we all agree on one thing: Canada, the true north, strong and free, the best country in the world, is worth celebrating and fighting for.”

It was Chretien’s idea.

Chretien, who served as the 20th prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003 was always a boisterous booster of Team Canada, even co-opting that sportive moniker, adopting it for the crew of premiers who’d accompany him on trade trips to drum up foreign investment.

“He just turned 91, but there’s no stopping that man,” the Port Alberni-born Campbell told CHEK. “He’s just totally full of beans.”

Canada’s first Flag Day didn’t go off without a hitch

That brings us to the first Flag Day, in 1996, and maybe not beans, but Chretien was surely filled with energy and vigour that day.

The first Flag Day was held in a park in Gatineau, Que.,—we called it Hull back then—across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill. It was a stingingly cold day. Thousands showed up and the place was electric.

Canada was only four months removed from a simmering fight with Quebec in the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. Much like the Golden Goal game, it was close, with the country remaining united by the slimmest of margins: 50.58% to 49.42%.

Only 54,288 votes prevented Quebec from separating from Canada and declaring its independence, so there was a certain anxious and spent mood in the nation’s capital, particularly on Parliament Hill. A mood that said, “Man, we almost lost our country.”

Anti-poverty protesters were vocal in the crowd, demonstrating against proposed changes to the unemployment insurance program.

Speeches were made and flags were waved but in the end, what will be remembered from that frigid afternoon in the Quebec cold is a confrontation between the prime minister and a demonstrator, a known fellow who had been in trouble with parliamentary security and the RCMP before, named Bill Clennett.

"It was Jean Chrétien who put an end to his speech, no doubt because of our slogans and noise makers," Clennett told Capital Daily. "Why he then chose to walk through the crowd was totally unexpected, even by the RCMP."

Within seconds, there was a commotion and a couple dozen reporters with cameras and microphones, including me with my state-of-the-art tape recorder, sprang from the media pen to try to get a clear angle.

I had a good siteline. Chretien grabbed Clennett with two hands on the face and wrested control of his body, neutralizing him before the RCMP jumped in and pushed the protester to the tundra.

The Shawinigan Handshake was born.

This was the second second intense incident involving the prime minister in about three months.

The previous November, Chretien's wife Aline grabbed an Inuit carving as she and her husband hid in their bedroom after an intruder broke into 24 Sussex. Now Chretien, who liked to call himself “the little guy from Shawinigan,” was taking his security into his own hands, it would seem.

Chretien was charged

Chretien eventually was charged with assaulting Clennett, and for the first time— and for few hours on May 6, 1996—Canada had a sitting prime minister up on criminal charges—until a Quebec judge summarily had those charges dismissed. ‍

It was also learned Chretien had relaxed his security from forming its usual diamond-shaped formation because he wanted to get close to the people to celebrate Flag Day.

So, will Flag Day resonate in Victoria today?

Twenty-nine years later, that’s what he and the four other former PMs have invited us to do today.

CHEK tracked down the folks at The Flag Shop downtown who said flags adorned with the maple leaf have been flying off the shelves, sales most likely spurred on to some degree, by Trump’s colonialist declaration and concern over impending US tariffs.

“I’ve never seen this mid-winter,” manager Freyja Zazu told CHEK News.

Alas, in typical unanimated and understated Canadian style, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of Flag Day events in town to fly the maple leaf at today—but I suspect a Team Canada victory in Montreal may provide one tonight.

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Note: This story has been updated to include quotes from Bill Clennett and adds that charges against Chretien were filed and then dropped and that anti-poverty protesters were present and vocal in the crowd that afternoon.