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Soon, every chair was occupied, and stragglers stood on the thick maple leaf–patterned carpet at the edges of the room.

But with Trump’s Maple Leaf delusion blowing up in his face, his incoherent tariff policies torpedoing the global economy and his purported deal-making brilliance accomplishing less than nothing in Ukraine, he looks nothing like an all-powerful stable-genius conqueror-slash-peacemaker on the world stage.

But after Donald Trump was reelected last fall and started threatening to turn America’s famously polite and peaceful northern neighbor into the “51st state,” Shilling’s dual-citizenship husband unfurled an enormous red and white maple leaf banner on their home in Vancouver for all the world to see.

The 60th anniversary of Canada's maple leaf flag might usually have passed without any royal intervention, but there was a fulsome message sent by the King, praising the "proud, resilient and compassionate country".

Those with keen ears might have noticed that during Alicia Keys’ beguiling Grammy Awards performance, which she began sitting side-saddle between two pianos to play Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” she mentioned Hazel Scott.