This weekend, under the Bluewater Bridge, Sarnia councillor Bill Dennis stood waving miniature Canadian and American flags with the mayor of Port Huron. A few feet away, Trump 2024 banners flapped alongside upside-down maple leafs and anti-vaccine slogans. Dennis smiled through it all, declaring the event a triumph of unity.
He called it non-political. Of course he did.
Meanwhile, Mayor Mike Bradley is still threatening to remove American flags from Sarnia arenas because of Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric and his now-infamous 51st state comment. Bradley’s supporters say it’s about sovereignty. His critics say it’s childish. They’re both right—and that’s the problem.
These are two men who have spent decades in positions of real power. They have voted on budgets, overseen crises, shaped policies that affect every corner of this city. And now, in a moment when housing is scarce, our population is aging and shrinking, and the economic vision hasn’t evolved since the last border duty-free closed down—they are fixated on flags.
Bradley and Dennis would have you believe they’re on opposite sides of a great debate. In reality, they are two sides of the same dull coin: both convinced that symbolism is leadership, that staging a moral posture about national loyalty is the same as building a better city.
It’s not. And no amount of flag-waving will change that.
The people doing the real work of politics in Sarnia aren’t posturing about cross-border diplomacy—they’re quietly fighting to make something functional here. They’re pushing for housing reform, harm reduction, downtown renewal, arts funding, transit, infrastructure that actually gets built. They’re the ones organizing in church basements and budget meetings, trying to thread together a future while council argues over which foreign flag is most offensive this week.
Politics is not the performance of caring. It’s not choosing the right gesture at the right time. It is the unglamorous, often thankless work of shifting systems and improving lives. And if your first instinct in a moment of international tension is to stage a photo op with a flag—or to rip one down—you’re not leading. You’re cosplaying statesmanship.
The true insult to Canadian sovereignty isn’t what’s being said in Washington. It’s what’s being ignored in Sarnia.