As a Canadian who has lived for many years in South Africa, I have grown accustomed to a few stereotypes.
One is that we are generally nice people who are not easily riled, and so polite that we end many sentences with a questioning “eh” as if we want to avoid confrontation even when discussing the weather.
“Looks like it’s going to rain, eh,” would be a typical example on this front.
The Maple Leaf is our national emblem and, well, it’s a leaf – it does not get more inoffensive than that. And our national animal is the mild-mannered beaver while the national bird is the harmless Canada jay.
But a couple of things can get us riled up.
One is being mistaken for Americans. In my case, whenever that happens in South Africa – “which part of the States are you from?” – my answer is invariably that I’m a “Snow Mexican.”
Being threatened with annexation by a far-right and boorish US politician who has also decided to start a pointless trade war that threatens Canadian jobs can also get us steamed up.
And so, as Canada/US relations have soured in recent weeks to freezing levels, it seems appropriate that Canada has looked to the ice for a battle cry taken from our national sport – hockey.
“Elbows up” is the cry and it echoes one Gordie Howe, a late great player who was known as “Mr. Hockey”.
Howe was modest, polite and had a grandfatherly manner off the ice. But when hockey was being played, he was rough even by the rough standards of the sport.
“If a guy slashed me, I’d grab his stick, pull him up alongside me and elbow him in the head,” Howe once said.
So Canada has now embraced “elbows up” as it steels for what could be a long and drawn-out political and economic confrontation with its southern neighbour.
#Elbows Up is trending on social media and it has been chanted at protest rallies and written on placards.
It also comes in the wake of Team Canada’s recent overtime victory over Team USA in the 4 Nations Face-Off title – kind of a mini hockey world cup – a tournament that featured three fights in the opening nine seconds of the first clash between the two teams and the booing of the US national anthem in Montreal.
A leaf, a beaver and a jay may be our emblems, but on the ice other animal spirits take hold, and the elbows come up.
Allow me to quip an old Canadian joke here – I once went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. Da-dum!
Canadians have also taken great offence to Trump’s references to the “51st State” (one of the ways we define ourselves is that we are not American), and his baiting of outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”.
One unintended consequence of this has been a surge of support in the polls for Trudeau’s Liberal Party, which on Sunday picked former central banker Mark Carney – who pointedly was once also a hockey player – as its new face to lead the party into a general election which could be held in a few weeks.
Not long ago, the opposition Conservative Party was seen as winning in a landslide, but the politics have changed dramatically as Canadians charge in with their elbows up. According to several polls, the Conservatives 20-point lead two months ago has melted into a statistical tie.
Read more: Mark Carney wins race to replace Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister
Trudeau has brought in $30-billion worth of retaliatory tariffs in response to those that Trump has imposed on Canada in his typically helter-skelter way, with delays and pledges that they could be even bigger than 25%, and that sort of confusion.
The uncertainty and chaos could push both economies into a recession, but Carney, who ran both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, knows a thing or two about economics.
In a battle on the ice last week that did not involve hockey but evoked Canada-US tensions, a photographer in Ontario captured the drama of a Canada goose and a bald eagle – the US national bird – squaring off on a frozen lake.
The goose rebuffed the predator, at times with its wings raised – the avian equivalent of bringing the elbows up.
South Africa of course is also in its own diplomatic ruckus with Trump, who sees the ANC as Zanu-PF on steroids, and this could also be economically catastrophic.
My advice to President Cyril Ramaphosa is to stride into this mess with his elbows up. Or, to use another old Canadian adage which this column uses as its tag, he should go “loaded for bear.” DM