Sleepy Flag Day is waking up for the Maple Leaf’s 60th birthday.

The new Canadian flag was inaugurated on Feb. 15, 1965, and the date was declared Flag Day in 1996.

Flag Day has usually been a rather flaccid affair, but it got off to a muscular start at the first observance in 1996. It was a time of fiscal crisis and the federal response had been dramatic. Upon egress from the event, prime minister Jean Chrétien was approached by a man protesting the spending cuts in Paul Martin’s 1995 budget. Chrétien throttled him in what became known as the “Shawinigan Handshake.”