Éric Blais: As I hike through Spain, fellow pilgrims praise Canada and despair over America - Toronto Star

There is no need for a Canadian flag on my backpack as fellow pilgrims share their love of Carney and despair for America.

Writer Éric Blais with Pedro, from Madrid, who is walking the Camino in his own country. Pedro is no admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump but he’d still like to see Spain made great again (his words) by better controlling immigration so newcomers the economy needs are contributing to it.

Éric Blais is president of Headspace Marketing in Toronto and the author of "Normal Nation: How Normalcy Could Play in a Third Québec Referendum."

I packed a small Canadian flag to hang from my backpack. It’s still at the bottom of my pack 10 days into the Camino Francés, a weeks-long pilgrimage from France to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and I doubt I’ll ever take it out. What hangs from my bag is the same scallop shell every pilgrim wears, the one that will point me toward Santiago for another 540 kms.

I didn’t hide the flag for lack of pride. I simply found I didn’t need it. Because inevitably, somewhere between a village fountain and the next café, someone asks where you’re from. And when I say Canada, I get the same answer, from Australians and South Koreans, Germans and Dutch: ah, Canada. We love your prime minister, how he’s standing up to Trump.

A young Londoner I walked with for a bit told me there’s a line going around now. Forget the famous Second World War slogan, “KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.” It’s “KEEP CALM and CARNEY ON.”

None of these people have read the speeches. They’re not following the tariff files. But they’ve absorbed something — an impression, a general sense of where a country stands; which is the thing marketers spend fortunes trying to manufacture. And here it was, on a dirt path in La Rioja, volunteered unprompted.