Of course we should boo the U.S. anthem

When a country's existence is casually threatened almost daily, its people shouldn't be expected to remain polite

Patrick Brown seems like a pretty smart guy. A politician who was once in Stephen Harper’s Cabinet, then seemed like a lock to be the Premier of Ontario until he was felled by a scandal, he ultimately bounced back to become Mayor of Brampton, the suburb northwest of Toronto, a job he has held since 2018.

He’s been scandal-free since, although I admit I do not follow Brampton politics closely, and is one of those politicians who is always out there in the community, visibly Doing Stuff, which is sometimes all you need to stretch incumbency out for as long as you want. Brampton borders Mississauga, where Hazel McCallion held the mayoralty for approximately 147 years.

But Brown has recently decided to weigh in on things happening beyond Brampton’s borders, which is of course fine on its own. He just happens to be reliably wrong.

Here’s Brown on Wayne Gretzky, who he says deserves our respect, not scorn:

This is a man who has given more to Canada than most of us could ever dream of. He has taken hits for this country — literally. He’s played through injuries, through broken ribs and concussions, through the wear and tear of carrying a nation’s hopes on his back. And now, he is being criticized for what? For not making a political statement to satisfy social media outrage? For being friends with the wrong person?

Nope, that’s not it at all. Gretzky is being criticized because he cannot seem to bring himself to say publicly that Canada does not deserve to be treated like shit by its neighbour and treaty ally.

I won’t rehash the whole of my recent Gretzky piece, but it’s possible to recognize his many contributions to Canadian hockey and also be disappointed that the guy is unwilling to make even the tiniest of public stands.

Brown followed his paean to Gretzky with a piece for iPolitics titled Why We Shouldn’t Boo the American Anthem. Here’s a taste of that:

I strongly oppose these tariffs, which are nothing more than an attack on Canada’s workers and economy. But let’s be clear: when we boo the anthem, we’re not just expressing our anger at a president or his policies—we risk sending the wrong message to our friends, allies, and neighbours to the south.

To which I say, respectfully, Your Worship: Fuck that.

Sending a message is the whole point! The message is that Canadians are angry that Donald Trump and his various cronies cannot seem to literally go a day without making a remark about Canada that is insulting, belittling, threatening or some combination of all three. The message is very much that Canadians do not like this “51st State” bullshit at all, not for a damn second. I would very much like to be in the White House press room to say that to the face of press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who seems to find her teasing responses to questions about Canada’s sovereignty absolutely hilarious, but as I do not have that opportunity I can only put it on the record here. And, if I had the chance, by booing The Star-Spangled Banner. Loudly and with feeling.

It’s important for Canadians to do this — should they choose, of course — because Trump and pals are, to put it bluntly, absolutely full of nonsense. They will proclaim that the tariffs are all about fentanyl, and then two breaths later say that the important thing is that manufacturing returns to America. They will insist that they don’t need anything from Canada, as Trump did on Tuesday, and then lose their absolute shit when Ontario taxes electricity imports, as Trump did on Tuesday. This stuff is totally exhausting, and one of the very few ways we can signal our displeasure is to boo the damn anthem. Does anyone honestly think that being respectful and polite is going to cause Donald Trump to treat us better? What is the point of trying to be calm and rational with a guy who is so clearly off his nut? Again on Tuesday, a day in which Trump increased and then decreased tariffs and also basically vowed to destroy Canada’s automobile industry, he tossed off — while doing an infomercial for Elon Musk’s Tesla on the White House lawn — that the border between Canada and the United States was “an artificial line” that could be easily removed to create a big, beautiful country. This is the guy who demands our respect?

Brown’s anthem piece also worries about the risk of conflating the U.S. President with the American people, many of whom, he notes correctly, didn’t vote for the guy. “When we boo their anthem, we are booing those very people,” he writes.

Fine. But, also: the American people elected this lunatic. TWICE. They chose a man who is so spectacularly ill-suited to the job that it is almost hard to believe, and who proved it pretty much daily in his first term, and now not only is he furiously messing up their country again, he is dicking around with everyone else’s, too.

The American people will have to forgive me if I think they wear some of this.

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And in other news … golf!

My latest for theScore examines the Great Golf Schism and the bridge that can’t seem to be built.