Amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Canada, some Canadian coffee shops have changed the name of the Americano to the Canadiano.
Among them is Mugz 2.0 Coffee House in Port McNeill, B.C. Owner Boni Sharpe says the menu switch at the café on northern Vancouver Island was meant to poke fun at a serious situation and highlight the value of buying local.
“Port McNeill is a small little community that relies heavily on other small communities, and I’m spreading the word to the best that I can,” Sharpe told CBC’s All Points West last month. “And I think when you add that little bit of humorous spin on it, it really sparked some good conversation.”
Anelyse Weiler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Victoria, says renaming the espresso-based drink is a sign that many Canadians are “mad as a stirred-up hornet’s nest” about the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“It’s meant to be a coy, symbolic way to assert Canadian national identity,” Weiler told CBC’s On The Island.
Sharpe said the switch to Canadiano aims to add a little humour to the “craziness” of current events, but in the past there have been less light-hearted efforts to change the names of food.
In 2003, U.S. politicians moved to rename French fries served in the House to “freedom fries” amid strained relations with France over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. That year, the maker of French’s mustard, worried that some Americans would boycott its product because of the French-led campaign against the Iraq war, issued a news release saying it’s not French.
As American soldiers battled Germany and its Central Powers allies in the First World War, there was an effort in the U.S. to rebrand sauerkraut as “liberty cabbage” to rid the fermented vegetable of its “pro-German stigma,” The New York Times reported in 1918.
In 2006, Iran renamed Danish pastries “Roses of the Prophet Muhammad” after a newspaper in Denmark published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, according to a BBC report.
Weiler hopes that renaming efforts and the push to buy local can spark deeper conversations around food-related issues, such as the rights of agricultural workers, the removal of interprovincial trade barriers, the impact of real estate speculation on farmland, and Canada’s National School Food Program, which was announced last year.
While she praises the push toward buying local, she encourages consumers to think critically about efforts by large supermarket chains to market Canadian-made products, noting that not long ago, grocery giant Loblaw agreed to pay $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit regarding their involvement in a bread price-fixing scheme.
Weiler calls the Canadiano a nice spin on the Americano and said more renaming efforts may be on the way, although some may be more successful than others.
“In our household, we eat a lot of Buffalo sauce,” she said of the hot sauce that shares its name with the Western New York city. “So to be petty, we started calling it ‘bison sauce,’ but it just doesn’t have the same ring.”
