One Ottawa entrepreneur is showing his patriotism with a new online store selling “strong and free” hats in response to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s recent comments about annexing Canada as the 51st state.
Liam Mooney, founder of Ottawa-based Jackpine Dynamic Branding, launched an online store last week selling red and navy blue tuques and baseball caps featuring the wording “Strong and Free” and “Canada Is Not For Sale.” The hats are also available with French wording — “Fort et libre” and “Le Canada n’est pas à vendre”.
“I was really bothered,” Mooney said of Trump’s comments. “As a former political staffer working in Ottawa (and) as a branding and political consultant strategist, I just saw the opportunity to do something quickly because of the nature of this problem and, being a proud Canadian, it seemed like it could be a fun, cheeky kind of way to respond to this issue.”
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He said the online store is a “small act of patriotism to respond to a big problem.”
Support for the hats is already pouring in with Ontario Premier Doug Ford donning a navy blue “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap while addressing the media in Ottawa on Wednesday. Ford is in Ottawa to attend a meeting between the country’s premiers and the prime minister regarding Trump’s threats of higher tariffs.
Thank you Liam and Emma from Jackpine for the fantastic hat. I was proud to wear it this morning to deliver the message that we need to put country first. Everyday Canadians are stepping up, united and proud. As the hat says, Canada is not for sale.
Pick up your own hat today!…
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) January 15, 2025
Wearing his own “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap, Mooney told OBJ on Wednesday that the premier’s office called Tuesday morning asking if a hat could be made for Ford in time for the first ministers summit.
“It’s really tricky to do. I worked with a bunch of Ottawa folks … We worked from 8:30 in the morning until about 7 or 8 p.m. trying to make this happen for him,” Mooney said.
Mooney said he worked in tandem with The SAM Group, a customization retailer, on Colonnade Road to convert the artwork into “a very specialized embroidery file” and with Lids Canada in the Rideau Centre to produce the hat.
Since Ford’s appearance on Wednesday morning, Mooney said the traffic to the online store has been “totally insane.”
“We’re getting five new emails (for orders) every minute. It’s from coast to coast and global ex-pats in the United States, in the U.K. and all over the world,” he said.
Mooney told OBJ that in the span of 90 minutes he’d sold $20,000 in hats.
“It’s surreal and exciting. We went from concept to on the premier within a week,” he said.
Shawn Hamilton, a principal at Proveras Commercial Realty, also showed his support for the hats on LinkedIn on Tuesday.
“Today I ordered these hats for our office as a testament to our Canadian pride,” Hamilton wrote on LinkedIn.
Since launching last Thursday, Mooney has already seen some sales, with the tuque being the most popular choice. Baseball caps are $40 and tuques are $35. They are similar to the “Make America Great Again” or “MAGA” hats popular in the U.S.
The hats themselves are sourced from Vietnam or Bangladesh, according to the site.
“Since we’re overwhelmed with early interest, we’ve been working to quickly pivot from getting (the) store up two days ago to an even more ‘made in Canada’ story,” he said.
Mooney said he is “in talks” with Canadian shop manufacturers to produce the hats.
“Universally, people love it. People are asking me for the website. They’re sharing it with their friends. They’re hoping to buy, and I think they as well want to take action and this could be an avenue for them,” Mooney said.
His website reads: “As questions about our national sovereignty are thrown into the spotlight by our neighbour to the South, this collection is a playful invitation for Canadians to declare: Canada is not for sale. Messy federal politics aside, we are still the true north, strong and free.”
While the initiative is still in its nascent stages, Mooney said once the store makes a profit, he and co-creator Emma Cochrane, a principal at Jackpine, hope to donate proceeds to a charitable organization.
“We’re hoping to work with a veterans-related charity and even something locally,” he said.
Mooney said the choice to use Shopify, which has its roots in Ottawa, to host the website, strongandfreehat.ca, was not an accident.
“(It was) an intentional choice, for sure. It’s a great Canadian company, an Ottawa company and I’m proud to use their platform,” he said.
“It’s an exciting project. My company just moved back downtown into an office this week and this is part of our way of bringing fresh creative energy to the city.”
