A Love Letter to Canada – My Canadian Pride

Canada is currently in a trade war with the United States. None of us asked for this, but here we are and it is affecting my Canadian pride.

It has us stressed, scrambling, watching the headlines and wondering where all of this will take our country. Yet, alongside the uncertainty, something else seems to be happening. Canadians are looking inward. We are talking more about what we make, what we buy, where we invest our money and how we can support one another. In a strange way, this moment seems to be bringing Canadians together.

As a Canadian artist, I find myself doubling down on something I have been exploring for two decades: the stories, symbols and spirit of Canada. The more conversations I have about my work, the more I realize how deeply invested I am in the visual language I have created. I call it my Pop Canadianisms. I have spent twenty years turning the things I recognize as distinctly Canadian into paintings. Some are obvious symbols. Others are fragments of memory, place and culture that carry a particular feeling of being Canadian.

I have created powerful imagery around hockey, ice skating, the Canadian flag, the Alberta Rockies, the Prairies, polar bears, plaid shirts, toques, canoes, mountains, Muskoka chairs, Mounties, maple leaves, Hudson’s Bay blankets, beer, Yellowknife, Newfoundland, the Salish Sea and The Tragically Hip. Taken individually, these things may seem like a collection of Canadian clichés. Together, they become something else: a visual vocabulary for a country I know intimately. The last time I remember feeling such a tremendous swell of Canadian pride was during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. I had only recently begun exploring my voice as a Canadian Pop artist. I started with a hockey mask and a Canadian flag, and from there my commentary began to take flight.

What started as an exploration of Canadian iconography has grown into a body of work spanning twenty years and hundreds of paintings. These paintings tell stories about Canada, but they also radiate the feelings I have about this place. Pride. Belonging. Humour. Nostalgia. Contradiction. Awe. Sometimes even a little frustration. Canada is not a perfect country, and my paintings are not intended to suggest that it is. They are about paying attention to the things that make this country feel like home.

And right now, that feels especially important. This trade war is affecting how and where I do business. It is influencing the companies I buy from, the materials I use and the markets I consider. As an artist and small business owner, I feel those changes firsthand. But rather than pulling me away from my Canadian subject matter, it has done the opposite.

It has made me want to look more closely at Canada. To paint our landscapes. Our people. Our symbols. Our stories. The things we recognize immediately and the things we are still learning to understand. For me, making Canadian art is one small way of investing in Canada. Every painting is a conversation about who we are, where we come from and what we value. And perhaps that is one of the most meaningful things we can do in uncertain times: tell our own stories, support our own creative voices and keep making things that are distinctly our own.

This is my love letter to Canada.

I have been painting it for twenty years, and I am not finished yet.