For as long as I can remember, when Americans thought about Canadians, if they thought about us at all, they pictured friendly, modest, maple-syrup-and-beer-guzzling hosers with weird accents who are mad for hockey, stop at red stoplights even when no one’s coming, and are so polite, they apologize to doors they bump into.

If you only consumed American media, your entire impression of Canada and Canadians would be formed by watching TV weather reports (“There’s a cold front coming down from Canada”) and admittedly hilarious send-ups of us on The Simpsons, South Park and SNL.

Every Canadian has a story (and every comic a bit) about how little Americans know about us. Here’s mine: several summers during high school, I attended basketball camp with Canadian and American kids at the International Peace Gardens in the Turtle Mountains, on the Manitoba/North Dakota border. Some of the girls from Florida were stunned to learn we played basketball in Canada—and completely blown away when I informed them a Canadian actually invented the sport. But it wasn’t just kids from the southern states who were clueless about Canada. Campers from North Dakota, who lived an hour from the Canadian border, asked me if we lived in igloos (no, it’s not a myth), and whether we had TVs and telephones.

When you sleep next to an elephant, as Pierre Trudeau famously put it, or live in a really nice apartment over a meth lab, as Robin Williams did, it’s understandable you’d adopt a defensive posture and define yourself in relationship to your noisier, far more powerful neighbour. Which we did, for a long time. When asked what it meant to be Canadian, we answered: not American.

But if a brand is a statement of who you are, and the core message you want to project to the world, then defining it by what you’re not can only take you so far. You never get to say what you stand for on your terms.

When asked what it meant to be Canadian, we answered: not American.

Which is why I’m happy to report that our country has recently gone through a major rebrand. We weren’t planning one, because we never had to think about rebranding before. As so often happens in a rebrand, suddenly things changed, and we had no choice but to reclaim our identity and assert it loudly and proudly to the world.

But here’s the thing: we didn’t embark on a wholesale reinvention of ourselves. We just embarked on a rearticulation of who we always were: our own country with our own strengths, identity, and values. We went from saying, we’re “not American” to communicating another narrative about ourselves entirely. We did it by abandoning our party loyalties, pulling together, and electing a banker who’d never held political office to lead us.

A banker. How boringly Canadian. And yet Mark Carney, that banker we elected? It turns out that he—and the country he’s repping—has rizz, as the kids like to say.

That dry wit! That subtle, understated sex appeal! The intelligence. The authority. The calm, dignified-yet-forceful demeanour. The quiet patriot, who refuses to take the bait or be bullied. The conciliator. The pragmatist. The runner, who enjoys being in nature. The dedicated hockey enthusiast. The comfortable-in-his-own skin, compassionate straight shooter who wrote the book on values, talks directly (in complete sentences, no less!) and wows at Davos. Who comes up with statements like “our founding insight is that unity does not require uniformity”. Who doesn’t bullshit his audience and genuinely wants the best for his people, no matter what their political allegiance.

We didn’t embark on a wholesale reinvention of our brand. We just rearticulated who we are—and always were.

Recently, a Democratic senator bemoaning the damage Trump has inflicted on the US-Canada relationship told Chris Hayes on MS NOW: “it’s hard to piss off the Canadians”. Which is true. We’re slow to anger, inclined to de-escalate and seek compromise. That’s our brand. And while we’re not mean-spirited, we do enjoy irony. When the mayors and governors of US red states begged us to return because our travel boycott was devastating their tourist industries, one online Canadian commenter posted, “Who’s sorry now?”

But however patient and polite we may be, if you betray us, or push us too far, we’ll respond in ways that might surprise you: boo your national anthem, embark on a national grassroots boycott of your products, take your liquor off our shelves, stop travelling to your country. Don’t confuse our niceness and congeniality with weakness, or you’ll regret it. That’s our brand, too. As Canadian-born he “People underestimate Canadians. [The] winters are so brutal that after generations and generations of surviving those winters, Canadians have spines of steel. [Trump] would be wise to stay away from this in the same way Hitler made a mistake charging into Russia. If he does it in the winter, he’s going to lose. Canadians are good on ice.” (“We can fight and skate at the same time,” he told another reporter.)

Once you lean into who you are and define your brand on your own terms, others will take notice. Tyler Bucket, a YouTuber who describes himself as “your typical, average American” who likes to learn about Canada, has created a whole YouTube channel based on playing videos he finds online about Canadian politics,history and culture. He plays the videos, stopping and restarting them at various points to learn about Canada in real time, and comment on what he’s learning from his American perspective.

Tyler readily admits he knows almost nothing about Canada. But his ignorance is part of his charm, at least to a Canadian audience, because he’s smart, self-aware, and genuinely curious about Canada. What’s been interesting to observe, especially if you go back and watch some of his earlier videos, is how his admiration and respect for the country has steadily grown—not just as he learns about us—but as he observes our country rebranding in response to the current political moment. As we assert our true identity, he’s thrown back on all of his stereotypical perceptions about us, which we, of course, enabled, by not seizing control of our brand sooner.

It turns out that when we assert our true brand identity loudly and proudly, the world takes notice.

But perhaps one of the most telling recent examples of why defining your brand on your terms matters so much are the results of the 2025 Anholt Nation Brands Index, an annual global index of how nations are perceived in the world. This is not a small survey. It questioned 40,000 people representing almost 80 per cent of global GDP. Among its key findings? America used to land in first place before Trump arrived on the scene, dropped to seventh after he was elected in 2016, then fell to 14th after he was re-elected in 2024. And Canada? It rose from sixth to third place, replacing Italy, with nearly a third of respondents worldwide reporting that their views of Canada had become more positive since 2024.

The phrase respondents used most frequently to describe Canada was “good country”. According to the Anholt Brands Index, “Canada’s stance against Donald Trump was frequently mentioned, with many respondents expressing admiration for the country’s courage, independence, and resolute political position during trade and political conflicts.” (Although we decimated their tourist, wine and spirits industries, Americans continue to hold us in high regard. Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, ran the numbers and concluded: “When you pick on Canada as the United States President, you are picking on a country that the American people adore.”

Simon Anholt, creator of the Brands Index, comments: “All the available data suggests that a diminished reputation will, in time, produce diminished commercial, cultural and diplomatic returns, and the first signs of this impact on the U.S. economy are already visible. Trump’s acolytes and imitators around the world would do well to observe that, over time, aggressive nationalism carries an inevitable and potentially huge economic cost. If Canada’s performance is anything to go by, it also benefits their competitors.”

A strong brand, it turns out, isn’t just good for your reputation. It’s also good for business.

And the broader moral of this story? You can’t build or sustain a brand based on what you’re not. Another key takeaway here is the importance of process. As Canadians, we really needed to see who we weren’t—and never wanted to be—to define who we are—and always were. The irony is that it took the so-called branding genius in the Oval Office insulting, betraying and threatening to annex us to shock us into awareness. So credit where credit is due, Donald. Thanks for the wake-up call reminding us of what Brand Canada stands for—and always has.