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maplewashing
DCHP-3 (Apr 2025)
Spelling variants:maple-washing, maple washing
Formed as a blend in analogy to greenwashing (def. 1b) and whitewashing (def. 1a).
1an. — Colonialism, Media
the invisibilizing of colonialism in Canada's history.
Type: 6. Memorial — A rhetorical trope throughout much of Canada's Anglophone history is the stylization of everything British-Canadian and eventually Canadian as superior to other locales, especially the US. This effect has its root in "Canadian Dainty" (Chambers 2004), which began in the 1830s and reached its peak in the 1950s. Maplewashing, though the term is new, is part of the cultural map of the country. It was originally rooted in an attitude that "put everything English on a pedestal" and has since merged into Canadian (and often anti-American) ideals (Dollinger 2019: 21-22). Domestic media (see the second 2016 quotation) plays a major role in such perceptions.
As Chart 1 shows, the term is presently almost exclusively used within Canada.
As Chart 1 shows, the term is presently almost exclusively used within Canada.
Quotations
2016
Luke Savage is a Toronto writer and producer with the Broadbent Institute. He says "maple washing" needs to end.
"Sure, we don't have our own Donald Trump...but what about our, you know, actual and obvious problems? The incidents of quotidian racism in the United States we constantly hear about certainly aren't unknown to Canada. So, as much as it might be fun to respond to every international outrage with that latest viral picture of Justin Trudeau in a yoga pose, I believe it's time we ended the practice of maple-washing once and for all."
"Sure, we don't have our own Donald Trump...but what about our, you know, actual and obvious problems? The incidents of quotidian racism in the United States we constantly hear about certainly aren't unknown to Canada. So, as much as it might be fun to respond to every international outrage with that latest viral picture of Justin Trudeau in a yoga pose, I believe it's time we ended the practice of maple-washing once and for all."
2016
I think the @Canada Twitter account was maple-washing. Keep in mind: this is the same account that claimed “Canada has a long history of welcoming immigrants," in reference to Sir John A. Macdonald’s Scottish origin. This is the same man who fought for the Chinese Head Tax, and once said “the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics ... The cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.”
2019
As their outward-facing final exam, the participating students created an installment in the atrium of the KPU Library called Maple-Washing: A Disruption, which was launched on December 19, 2019, and ran until January 24, 2020. The exhibition, an integration of ceramics and literary analysis, articulated select parts of Canadian colonial history that resist the myth of multicultural Canada [...].
1bn. — Federalism, Canada-US relations
the glorification of all things Canadian.
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Connected to definition 1a, an image of Canadian moral leadership in the world is projected at times domestically but often internationally (see the first 2018 quotation). This trope leads to the use of Canadian symbols (e.g. a maple leaf) in the marketing of products to Canadians (see the second 2018 quotation).
Quotations
2018
Fellow Torontonian Luke Savage has produced didactic essays for Current Affairs and the New Statesman on similar themes, and he was recently a guest on the Citations Needed podcast about "Maplewashing" - a term coined to decry excessive "fetishization" of Canada by foreigners.
2018
Is "maplewashing" a thing? Grapefruit don't grow on maple trees. But for some strange reason my "Product of USA" water has a maple leaf on the packaging.
2023
[The suffix -wash is not limited to colors. Linguist Ben Zimmer cites examples of Canadians maplewashing, acting as if their country has no problems because those of other countries seem worse.]
2n. — Economy, Canada-US relations
the exaggeration of Canadian-made resources or labour used in a product.
Type: 3. Semantic Change — In the light of high, controversial tariffs levelled onto Canadian goods by the 47th US president on 4 March 2025 and a rhetoric of annexation of Canada as the "51st state", the term has acquired a new meaning in the sense of greenwashing but related to the Canadian provenance of goods and services.
Quotations
2025
Shoppers across the country are scrutinizing labels in search of Canadian products amid U.S. trade tensions, and as businesses scramble to tap into the Buy Canadian boom, some are being accused of "maple-washing" – misleading consumers by overstating their products’ ties to Canada.
2025
Mike von Massow, a professor at the University of Guelph who studies food and labelling, says food producers and retailers should explain what their labelling actually means.[...]"As long as we're clear on what they're telling us, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but it might in some cases be an oversimplification," he said. "There is a risk of, you know, to coin a new phrase, maple-washing to try and get more credit for being Canadian than perhaps a customer might expect."
3adj. — Colonialism, Media, Federalism, Economy, Canada-US relations
being in a state of definitions 1a-2.
Type: 5. Frequency — The term has quickly come to be used adjectivally, both in attributive position (see the 2019 quotation) and predicatively (see the 2021 quotation).
Quotations
2017
A history that's often whitewashed, greenwashed, & maplewashed. Parks around the world have displaced peoples. Let's acknowledge that.
2019
The 16 displays contested the sanitization or complete erasure of narratives that document these "maple-washed" incidents in Canadian history.
2021
The education portion was so maple washed that it wouldn't work with the curriculum, which is saying a lot.
4v. — Rare, Informal, Colonialism, Media, Federalism, Economy, Canada-US relations
the process behind definitions 1a-2.
Type: 5. Frequency — The term is also used as a verb, which still has largely informal connotations and is, though as old as the noun uses, rather rare at present. The attestations stem from social media comments.
Quotations
2022
For Green, the book offers Black Canadians a chance to correct misconceptions around what it means to be Black in Canada. He said "It feels like Canadian society would prefer to relegate the struggles of African Canadians or Black people in diaspora to an American experience as a way to maple wash the complicity of our own involvement in settler colonialism, white supremacy, the transatlantic slave trade and ongoing struggles [...]."
2025
This same ER doctor recognized that the system fails, yet maplewashes it to downplay how bad it is.
References
- Chambers (2004)
- Dollinger (2019) • Chapter 1
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