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Like many of us in April of 2020, Chris Whitman was bored. A former middle-school history teacher in Nobleton, Ont., Chris was spending the early days of the pandemic looking for something to do. “I couldn’t get outside to do any of my hobbies,” he recalls, “but I had all of this scrap wood in my workshop. My wife suggested that I try making signs.” His first efforts, by his own admission, were not very good, but then he bought a scroll saw, and the seeds of Red Lion Woodworking were sown.
Always a proud Canadian, Chris had long been fascinated by the history of flags in our country, and he tried his hand at creating reproductions out of reclaimed lumber. “Making flags was a way for me to educate people,” he says. He recreated some early 1960s designs from the Great Flag Debate, the process that ended in the adoption of our familiar red-on-white maple leaf in 1964. His collection also includes beautiful versions of the Pearson Pennant (his No. 2 bestseller) and the Vimy Ridge Red Ensign, which he made to honour his wife’s great-grandfather, who fought in that storied battle. He began selling his flags—and other pieces—at the Rosseau Market and, eventually, the Spring Cottage Life Show, which is where I met him this past March.
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I noticed a small flag in his wares, a traditional maple leaf about 15-by-8 inches that would have been perfect for my porch. But by the time I stopped by, it was already sold out; he was taking orders for later delivery. “In previous shows, I would have sold four or five Canadian flags total, but this year sold more than forty,” he says. And, even after the show, demand remains strong. “It takes a long time to make these ones, and I can’t really charge what they are worth, but I’m doing my part for national pride.”
I aim to be an optimist, so I do see a silver lining in all this recent talk about the 51st state and Trump tariffs. Canadians have long defined ourselves as what we are not—flag-waving, bombastic Americans. We believe in peace, order, and good government, not jingoism. But we also feel deeply hurt and a bit wary right now, which is forcing a kind of reckoning around how we express our pride in our home.
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The flag is a central part of that. During the Freedom Convoy protests of a few years ago, our flag had a different sort of moment, one that didn’t signal solidarity. Depending how you felt about the protests, the flag was either being used to represent personal freedom from unwarranted restrictions or irresponsible freedom from taking care of each other. Either way, Canadians were in a familiar place: unsure of how to express our love for country. But now, waving the flag—and being proud of our imperfect-but-still-striving country—is cool again. As Chris puts it, “We are all really angry and insulted by what’s been going on. It feels good to wave the flag.”
Sure does. And one of my favourite morning activities (which is right on brand for the June/July 2025 issue, the Morning issue) is raising the flag at the cottage. There is no place on earth I feel more Canadian than on the end of a dock, standing with a pine-collared lake before me and the sky big above. I’ve been in that place thousands of times, in dozens of different locations, and I always feel the same—I could not be luckier. “Our flag has always been special,” says Chris. “It makes us think about all the great things about our country.”
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This article was originally published in the June/July 2025 issue of Cottage Life.
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