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I have lived under four flags in my life – the Union Jack, the Canadian Red Ensign, the Luxembourg tricolour of red, white, and light blue, and the Maple Leaf flag that we have now.

The most patriotic event I remember as a child, was going to the Ottawa War Memorial with my Dad for Remembrance Day. I had a red coat and a red hat with a feather on it. I wasn’t very old, but I felt the importance of the occasion and was very proud to be with my father, who had flown Spitfires with the Royal Air Force in the Second World War.

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In the olden days, we Canadians thought it was rather in poor taste and jingoistic of the Americans, who were constantly waving their flag and jumping up and down about their wonderful country.

We were much more sedate about things like that. We got our new flag with a bit of a fuss in 1965. It looked like no other flag in the world. It didn’t have heraldic thingamajigs on it. It was straightforward, it was distinctive and the Maple Leaf was perfect for a country that had glorious red maples in the fall.

More recently, we used to have a Canada Day gathering at our place in the county, when my husband would put flags all the way along the driveway and we had flags flying off the house. However, that was only once a year.

I truly do not remember a time when people here in our country were as patriotically outgoing as they are now. They are flying the flag, they are belting out our national anthem at games to the point where the singer can’t be heard. There is red and white all over the place.

And then there is the grocery shopping. Grocery shopping for goodness sake! It takes people far more time to get those groceries to the checkout. They are reading the labels, they are taking photos of the labels on their phones so they can read the fine print to make sure they are buying Canadian products or products from any other country than the USA.

There are nuances to this buying business. It can be tricky. Do you shop at a locally owned store but need something that only comes from the USA? How do you know where the gas comes from that goes in your car, truck, snowmobile or snowblower?

If you are in the market for a new vehicle, how can you tell where all the parts come from and where they are assembled? Some vehicles are easy to recognize but others aren’t.

These days, the number of snowbirds heading for warm U.S. states has declined. Some folks are going to Mexico or Central America or other warm places but not the U.S.

And all this heightened appreciation for our own country has come about because the new U.S. president has said he thinks he’d like to have us as a 51st state. Our population is just over the population of California – not by much. And I hear that there is a petition going around in California these days stating those petitioners want to secede from the United States.

With regards to the Ukraine and Gaza, I am reminded of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s signing of the Munich Agreement on Sept. 30, 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler. What a messed-up time we are living in. We are spectators of the wrenching and tearing up of the world’s countries’ boundaries.

And still wars go on. And still people die.

Anne M. Crossman is a former journalist and media manager. She now does volunteer work in her community of Annapolis Royal and can be reached at [email protected] .

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