As with the US's obesity crisis or Britain's functional alcoholism, Canada's maple leaf addiction is almost impossible to see from the inside. Only by moving abroad can one get a handle on the true scale of the thing.

My epiphany came during a recent trip to Toronto, the city where I grew up. With mounting disbelief, then embarrassment, then resignation, I stopped counting maple leaves when I reached 40 – and that was before I'd cleared customs. There were maple leaves blushing on "welcome home" posters; maple leaf patches sewn on to rucksacks; maple leaves on replica shirts of Toronto's hockey team, the Maple Leafs; and special edition Toronto Blue Jays caps that replaced the team's logo, stubbornly resembling something other than a maple leaf, with a maple leaf; while outside, a be-leafed Air Canada plane bearing be-leafed airborne Canadians drifted leaf-like on to the runway.

My partner, a Norwegian, was incredulous. In pride-averse Norway, she explained, the flag can be tastefully flown on only a few occasions each year – birthdays and national day – and edible Nordic crosses are unheard of. Granted, Canada isn't in Europe, where even the most benign expressions of nationalism should be treated as potentially apocalyptic. But maybe, just maybe, her compatriots are on to something.
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A second, related answer is corporate red-washing. It's a known fact among US marketing departments that, all things being equal, the discerning Canadian consumer chooses the leaf-waving establishment every time. McDonald's knows this. So does Taco Bell. So do Sears, Target, General Motors and loads more with maple leaves added to their logos. But how to explain the leaves Canadians choose for ourselves? The biscuits, the sports paraphernalia, the tattoos? Cunning though they are, American fast food franchises can at worst be accused of simply exploiting, not creating, the demand. Here, I'm afraid, it's impossible to avoid the existential question that most Canadians would prefer not to acknowledge: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to carve a maple leaf in to it, is it basically just American?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/01/canada-day-obsessed-maple-leaf-insecurity