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For the second time in weeks, a Canadian icon has emerged as the unlikely victor in an existential battle on the ice.
Mervyn Sequeira, an Ontario photographer, was out with his family on a recent morning when they spotted a bald eagle descending towards a frozen lake.
Sensing a looming attack on unsuspecting prey, Sequeira scanned the landscape and saw a Canada goose, alone and vulnerable.
For the next 20 minutes, lens trained on the battle, Sequeira watched what he expected would be a lopsided fight with a grim coda.
Through bursts of his shutter, however, he captured a defiant goose fending off death.
“I’ve seen bald eagles take a lot of things, from ducks to muskrats. But this is the first time I’ve seen a bald eagle go in for something as big as a goose,” he said.
Despite multiple attacks by the eagle, the goose remained unbowed. The raptor, defeated, flew off.
At a time when Canada’s sovereignty has come under unprecedented threat from Donald Trump’s US, the battle between the two birds closely associated with each country has emerged as the latest symbol of tensions between the two countries.
This week, Trump put a 25% tax on most Canadian goods and has further aggravated his northern neighbour, derisively calling it the 51st state and pledging to annex the world’s second largest country.
Three days earlier, Canada’s national hockey team had stepped on to the ice in Boston for a match heralded as a showdown between the sport’s most powerful nations.
An overtime Canadian goal, heavily laden with symbolism, finished the game and both electrified and soothed an anxious nation.
“You can’t take our country – and you can’t take our game,” the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, posted on social media.
For Canadians, such encounters have been impossible to untangle from a trade war brought on by the country’s closest ally and largest trading partner.
“We’ve been in tough spots before … but we have not only survived, we have emerged stronger than ever, because when it comes to defending our great nation, there is no price we all aren’t willing to pay, and today is no different,” Trudeau told Canadians.
Sequeira, a retired airline pilot and avid bird photographer, is hesitant to impress symbolism on to the pictures.
“It’s quite a coincidence that it should have happened at this time. And I’m not entirely surprised. I like to look at things from the naturalist point of view and from the wildlife photographer’s point of view and not put a spin on it. But it’s quite natural for people to look at it in the context of what’s happening,” he said.
Certainly others see the fight as representing Canada’s scrappy nature and its unwillingness to back away when threatened.
“Nature has its way of taking out the weak and the not so well and the injured. The eagle likely thought it would be able to take it out quite easily,” Sequeira said. “But, it wasn’t.”
