Some Americans are pretending to be Canadian while traveling – but locals aren’t buying it.
One way in which they do this is through “flag jacking”. The trend goes like this: traveling Americans, wary that a foreign hosts will treat them with scorn and resentment, affix Canadian flags to their backpacks or clothing in an attempt to hide their heritage.
Reports of “flag jacking” date back to at least the 1960s, when the U.S. was facing scrutiny over the Vietnam War. It happened again in the 2000s as some Americans reportedly sought to distance themselves from U.S. foreign policy.
More recently, Canadians angry with the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric towards their country have called out the act, with many online even comparing it to cultural appropriation, according to CNN.
On top of that, American tourists in disguise are not really fooling anyone.
Apart from the obvious differences – such a systems of measurements, accents, customs and geographical knowledge – many subtleties distinguish Americans from their neighbors to the north.
European tour guides who spoke to CNN said that one way they can tell Americans apart is how loud they are.
“Stereotypes exist for a reason,” Denisa Podhrazska, the founder of the Let Me Show You London tour group, told the broadcaster. “We use them because many of them are true. And it’s not just Americans, it’s for everybody. Every nation has its own little quirks, that’s how we recognize each other.”
Americans are typically “really nice, and loud,” she added.
As Podhrazska said, stereotypes exist on both sides of the aisle. The old joke of: ‘How do you tell is someone is from Canada? They tell you,’ also rings true, according to guides.
“Canadians will identify themselves as Canadian right away,” Parisian Bertrand d’Aleman, founder of My Private Paris tours, told CNN. Other tour guides interviewed by the outlet added that Canadians do often try and distinguish themselves from Americans.
The approaches tourists take to foreign cultures can also help differentiate which country they come from, guides say.
Many Canadians have a broader knowledge of European history and affairs given their cultural heritage. Charley Harrison, founder of the London-based Totally Tailored Tours, meanwhile, told CNN that Americans can fall into the trap of assuming their culture is the norm, even trying to pay in U.S. dollars while abroad and their insistence that it is British people who have an accent.
Canadian cultural commentator Stewart Reynolds said that his countrymen aren’t perfect either, however. “Canada’s got jerks. We’ve got loads of jerks,” he told CNN.
Robert Schertzer, a professor at the University of Toronto, explained that some Canadians get upset by acts such as “flag jacking” as the country’s nationalism “at its core has an element of anti-Americanism.”
“So when an American pretends to be Canadian, it’s understandable why a person who is feeling this national pride and is stimulated by outside threats would respond emotionally to that,” he said.
