(The following story by Patrick White appeared on the Globe and Mail website on January 9.)

WINNIPEG Situated in an industrial area 20 minutes east of downtown Winnipeg and populated by burly men in steel-toes and hard hats, Canadian National Railway's Transcona rail shops seem an uncommon venue for patriotic protest.

But late last year, rail workers at the century-old yard began festooning hats and overalls with Maple Leaf stickers after their American management decided to remove two large Canadian flags from the workplace.

The flags were taken down last summer as part of a general cleaning at the CN facility, which employs roughly 500 workers.

Terry Corson, the Montana-born director of the Transcona shops, says he had the flags removed because "they were filthy, dirty and, quite honestly, a bit of a disgrace."

But shop workers and their union see the removal as part of a larger shift away from the company's Canadian roots. Formerly a Crown corporation, CN was privatized in 1995.

"The American influence is pretty strong," said one worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal. "Some of the guys figured the stickers would be a good way of letting management know we weren't too happy with them taking the big flags down."

Workers first noticed the flags missing in November, several months after Mr. Corson had them unhooked from the car shop rafters during a general cleaning and repainting.

At least two employees approached management to demand the flags be replaced.

"The fellas were told outright that no flags would be going back up," said Les Lilley, local representative for the shop's union, Canadian Autoworkers Local 100. "Their American bosses took them down and refused to replace them."

Mr. Lilley said he has raised the issue with CN management three times to no avail.

"It's an American company now, run almost totally by Americans," he said. "There isn't much you can do."

As an example of previous efforts to white-out the company's Canadian identity, Mr. Lilley said workers were asked several years ago to refer to the company only as 'CN,' and not Canadian National.

Company officials said the request was part of a larger branding strategy and that "Canadian National Railway Company" remains its proper legal name.

In December, the union approached Elmwood-Transcona MP Jim Maloway about the flag flap. He furnished them with paper flags and lapel pins.

Yesterday evening, workers inside the shops were wearing hard hats plastered with Canada flag stickers, and two small paper flags greeted visitors at the entrance to the wheel shop.

Mr. Corson isn't backing down from his position. As a former member of the U.S. military, he maintains that flags deserve a more respectful location than a shop ceiling.

"Flags mean a lot to me," said Mr. Corson, who maintains that the roughly six-foot-by-eight-foot flags also blocked shop lighting. "People die for flags. We have a flag flying at our gates that is there to represent the whole complex."

The small symbols of protest don't bother him, he said.

"If they want a flag pin or a flag sticker on a hardhat, that's fine. That's not a real flag. The one you fight for is the one that hangs on the pole."

Mr. Corson was surprised to hear yesterday that the issue was still simmering among his workers. "Besides one or two people coming to me last month, I haven't heard a peep from them about this."

Friday, January 09, 2009