MONTREAL – Alain Ejeil is a restaurant owner, not someone looking to stir up trouble.
He’d much rather serve up dishes like poulet à la Basquaise, braised chicken with puréed potatoes in olive oil, or tartare de boeuf, beef with an emulsion of lime, capers and chives.
But if you buy either of those specialties at his restaurant, Bidon Taverne Culinaire, just outside of Montreal, the chicken or the beef won’t come from the United States. Nor can you pair those dishes with a California chardonnay or an Oregon pinot noir.
Ejeil stopped buying American food items and pulled U.S.-made wines and spirits from his shelves back in February after President Donald Trump started to taunt Canada with the threat of tariffs and American statehood. It wasn’t an easy decision, he said, but as a Canadian, it was the right thing to do.
“I love America,” he said.
But he also feels a duty to his country and his kitchen. For those reasons, he has become a reluctant warrior in Canada’s tariff war with the United States.
Canadians are known for their easy-going attitude, friendliness and hospitality. But Trump is testing the limits of their cordiality.
The U.S. president slapped a 25% tariff on nearly all Canadian imports back in February, then suspended them on many products. A new 35% duty on many Canadian goods takes effect Aug. 1, raising the stakes in a trade war that threatens to inflict even more pain on Canadians and further poison relations between the neighboring countries.
Even before the upcoming round of tariffs, Canadians have been feeling the impact of Trump’s policies.
Many in the food and beverage industry, like Ejeil, have yanked American products from their shelves while a “Buy Canadian” movement has taken hold across much of the country.
A small business owner who makes custom-designed guitars from the basement of his Montreal home reported that some of his U.S. customers are getting hit with $1,000 tariff fees on top of the cost of their instruments.
Others are affected in different ways. A surge in Canadian patriotism has driven up sales of red-and-white Canadian flags, patches and lapel pins and spawned a demand for hats and T-shirts with slogans like “Canada Is Not For Sale.”
Even business owners like bagel maker Rhonda Shlafman have been swept up in the tide. Shlafman said she wasn’t trying to make a political statement when she came up with a red-and-white creation that she called the Canada Bagel. She just wanted to do something to lift the spirits of her fellow Canadians, who she said seemed depressed by all of the recent negativity.
But Canadians are hungry for anything that promotes Canadian patriotism, even in the form of dough and yeast, so the Canada Bagel has been flying off the shelves of Shlafman’s shop, Fairmount Bagel.
‘Standing with Canada’
On a quiet street corner in the mostly residential city of Saint-Lambert, across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal, Bidon Taverne Culinaire seems far removed from the tariff tensions roiling Canada and the United States.
Open since 2010, the cozy bistro serves up classic French fare like l’onglet de boeuf (steak) alongside other flavors from around the world and simple but popular dishes like fish and chips. Chalkboards mounted on the wall announce the menu and cocktail selections in large, loopy cursive handwriting.
The restaurant’s clientele are mostly locals. And they are loyal. Some dine there three or four times a week. It’s not uncommon for someone to swing by for lunch and return later that evening for dinner, said Ejeil, who has owned the eatery since 2018 with his wife, Joyce Takla.
The customer loyalty has extended to Ejeil’s decision to boycott American foods and alcohol. He removed them from his menu back in February after consulting with his wife and the restaurant’s manager. He announced the decision on social media and then watched as the post went viral. A few weeks later, Quebec’s liquor board announced that it would cease importing all American booze.
Gone from Ejeil’s menu are Kentucky bourbons and wines from California and Oregon. The beverage selection is now heavy on Canadian ryes and wines from France, Italy, Spain, Africa and, of course, Canada.
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Ejeil buys locally grown products whenever possible. Most of the chicken, duck and steak on his menu now comes from Canada, as do the vegetables. He tries to stick to Mediterranean fish or those found locally. Replacing fruits, like oranges and bananas, has been more difficult because of Canada’s colder climate. Thus, some of his fruits come from South America and, when they’re not available anywhere else, the United States.
Ejeil, whose family left Lebanon during the country’s civil war and came to Canada in 1984 when his mother was pregnant with him, personally has nothing against Trump, whose entrepreneurial instincts he has admired for years. An entrepreneur himself, Ejeil hopes to one day expand his business into the United States, possibly Florida.
Canada and the United States have been allies and neighbors for so long that they should be standing together and growing together, not fighting over tariffs and statehood, he said.
But as long as there is a fight, he knows which side he’s on.
“We’re standing with Canada,” he said. “We’re standing against the tariff war.”
$1,000 ‘just to cross the border’
From the basement of his Montreal home, Florian Bouyou builds custom-made electric guitars. What was once just a hobby is now a full-time job.
One wall of his workshop is covered with wooden templates of guitar bodies, necks and pick guards. A grinder, screwdrivers, cutting tools and other gizmos are scattered around the cluttered room. A guitar-in-progress rests on a workbench.
Bouyou carefully runs a string down the unfinished instrument’s long neck and threads it through a small hole in the tuning post. He pulls the string tight and snips off the excess with pliers. He twists the tuner, strums the string, adjusts the tuner again and then lays the instrument back on the table.
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Bouyou was working as a cabinet maker a few years ago and tinkering with guitars on the side when a friend asked him to design and build him one of the instruments. A new career was born – one he fears could be wrecked by the tariff tensions between Canada and the United States.
Bouyou produces 18 to 25 custom-made guitars every year under the brand name Millimetric Instruments and ships them to musicians and other customers mostly in the United States and in Europe, Australia and Asia.
This year, at least four of his U.S. customers received an unwelcome surprise along with their guitars: A duty of around $1,000 on top of each instrument’s $4,500 to $5,000 price tag.
Trump imposed a 25% tariff on nearly all imports from Canada and Mexico in February, then later suspended them on products that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal signed during his first term in office.
The trade agreement is supposed to cover Canadian-made guitars. But the shipping company Bouyou hired to send his instruments to the United States listed them on paperwork as wooden products. Unlike guitars, wooden products are subject to the tariffs.
“It’s ridiculous – like paying $1,000 just to cross the border,” Bouyou said. “It’s stupid.”
It’s also bad for business. Some customers hit with the tariffs said they wouldn’t have ordered his guitars if they’d known about the hefty fees.
Bouyou, who started playing drums when he was 12 and later taught himself to play guitar, understands their hesitance. He has switched shipping companies and hopes that will fix the paperwork snafu. But he’s not sure it will, given the state of confusion surrounding the on-again, off-again tariffs.
“You can’t get the certainty of having your guitar shipped and not tariffed,” he said.
Bouyou, a native of Brittany, France, who came to Canada nearly two decades ago, said he typically has a year’s worth of back orders for his guitars. After that, he’s not sure what will happen.
He wonders how much of a future there is for him as a guitar maker. He is teaching himself how to repair electronic devices like vintage amplifiers and has started to think about shifting his business in that direction so the majority of his customers will be Canadian.
He already has made one business decision because of Trump’s tariffs. He has stopped buying tuners and other guitar parts from U.S. distributors.
“I’m giving my money to Canadian companies,” he said.
‘The right time’ for the Canadian flag
The shelves of Marc-André Bazergui’s small shop in Montreal’s Côte-Saint-Paul neighborhood are stocked with the official flags of dozens of nations all over the world.
Flags from Haiti, Italy and Ukraine. Big flags. Small flags. Flags for a boat or car.
You can get all of them here.
But the flag that people are asking for most often is the one from home.
Talk of tariffs and Canadian statehood have made Canada’s red-and-white Maple Leaf a big seller, especially among first-time flag buyers.
“People are saying, ‘I’ve been thinking abut it, and now I think it’s the right time to do it,” said Bazergui, owner of the specialty store called simply Le Flag Shop.
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Even in Quebec, where the French language and the francophile culture make the province feel like a country within a country, the Canadian colors are flying high.
People in Quebec are sometimes hesitant to raise the Canadian flag out of fear it will be seen as a show of support for remaining a part of Canada, which could be a bit awkward if your next-door neighbor backs Quebec independence. Quebec has voted twice – in 1980 and 1995 – against becoming an independent country. But the Fleurdelisé – Quebec’s official flag, a white cross on a blue background decorated with four fleurs-de-lis – is still often flown in place of the Canadian Maple Leaf.
Now, many Quebecois are flying both, a political message intended not for the neighbors next door, but for those to the south, Bazergui said.
Bazergui said his store recently got a request from an 80-year-old woman who had been debating for years whether to fly the Canadian flag. The current state of affairs pushed her to a decision.
“I need my flag on my balcony,” she said. “Help me set one up.”
Other popular sellers in Bazergui’s shop are Canadian lapel pins and patches often used to decorate backpacks. Canadians are coming into the store and buying them before they travel abroad. They don’t want foreigners to confuse them with Americans, he said.
Items that aren’t going over particularly well: Those stamped “Made in the USA.” Bazergui said he has had customers refuse to buy flags once they see the U.S. manufacturing marker. “A flag made in China almost passes better than a flag made in the U.S.,” he said.
Lucky for him, his Canadian flags are all made in Canada.
A bagel and Canadian pride
Shlafman, the bagel shop owner, doesn’t want to talk politics. She just wants to make bagels. It’s what her family has done for more than a century.
The cramped work area in the back of Fairmount Bagel, founded by her grandfather in 1919, smells of freshly baked bread. The overpowering heat from the ovens is made tolerable by a stream of cool air blown through the room by an air conditioner.
At a table, a worker in an apron kneads a huge ball of dough, slices off a strip and shapes it into a familiar disc with a hole in the middle. Across from him, another worker uses a long piece of plywood to scoop up bagels and pull them out of the oven. With impressive precision, he gives the plywood a flip, and the bagels sail through the air and land in a basket nearby.
He never misses.
Shlafman, who owns the bakery with her brother Irwin Shlafman, came up with the idea for the Canada Bagel when she was driving to work one cold, rainy day in February, back when the tariff talk was heating up. As she listened to the news and watched people on the street, she couldn’t help but notice: Everyone seemed depressed.
“Why don’t I make something that’s fun, something’s that colorful, that will make people smile,” she remembers thinking.
Et voilà! The Canada Bagel was born. The chewy creation is made from two strands of dough – one red, one white – braided together to symbolize the Canadian flag. Food coloring gives the bagel its patriotic hue but doesn’t change the taste.
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The Canada Bagel was a hit.
“People started telling me and writing emails and giving a thumbs up – ‘Oh, we’re proud of you. You made a Canada Bagel to stand up for Canada,’” she said.
That was never her intention, she said. Nor is she looking to get into a bagel war with the United States. Montreal and New York City have long had a friendly rivalry over who makes the best bagel. But as far as Shlafman is concerned, there is no contest.
“Every day, you can come in here and buy a bagel, and you’re going to get the same bagel you would have bought from my grandfather in 1919 – the recipe hasn’t changed, the technique hasn’t changed,” she said.
While other people may have viewed the Canada Bagel as a declaration of nationalist pride, “I saw people looking happy and having fun – and that was really the goal,” Shlafman said.
Even with the tensions over tariffs and statehood, that’s a position Americans and Canadians can get behind.
Michael Collins is a national correspondent who writes about the intersection of politics and culture. A veteran journalist, he has covered the White House and Congress. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Canadian businesses are feeling impact of Trump’s tariff war
