I wonder if the meaning of this flag is totally decontextualized in London, Ontario, or if they just identify with their racist/pointlessly proud brethren in the South.
To Ontario guy it could just mean "working class rebel guy that likes country music and the Dukes of Hazzard," I don't know. I know the flag is bandied about as a symbol of white pride all over the world, so maybe that's it too.
He may be ignorantly latching onto a symbol from American media which he associates with the "conservative, southern-state redneck" lifestyle he obviously identifies with for some reason.
Confederate flags are not a potent symbol of racial division in Canada. A lot of Canadians associate it with a war between white Americans from the south and white Americans from the north, and the symbolism goes no deeper than that.
To think there are places in the world where you have to order your hate logos through the mail rather than get them absolutely everywhere. That is purely magical.
I used to live in Ada, OK. You could get everything from actual flags, to lunch boxes, to coffee mugs to sweat pants covered in the confederate flag, at just about any store you walked into in the area.
You could even get confederate flag stickers and license plate covers (Oklahoma only requires you to have a rear plate) at the local Auto Zone/Walmart auto dept.
The most amusing thing about the area is when you drive down the road and see yards with both the confederate flag and the US flag being flown side by side.
I knew a girl from Ada when I went to OU. She adopted a ridiculous (and poorly done) Brooklyn accent so she wouldn't sound like a hick. Of course, she sounded like a hick anyways, which was appropriate: she was one.
We get the double flag flown from monster trucks here all the time, which is hilarious since there was a time when Kentucky loathed both sides. Sometimes when I'm feeling mean I refer to that as "double plus treason."