While most of these designers are quick to admit they’ve been influenced by Dutch design, they’re just as quick to suggest they’ve gone beyond mere imitation and are in the process of creating something of their own. Castor Canadensis grew so tired of being compared with the influential Dutch design collective Droog that it named a lamp consisting of truck lights and electric guitar pedals their “This is not a f**king Droog light, light.” “It was a bit of a marketing ploy, but at the same time so many people email us and say, ‘You guys are like the Canadian Droog,’” says Taylor. “We love Droog’s work, but there are a lot of people other than Droog doing interesting things.”

One of the side effects of the emergence of this Canadian aesthetic is a new interest in and awareness of Canadian design history. When Fat Crow Design was creating the pieces for its inaugural White Moose collection, it designed a chair with cushions inspired by a space heater. But it was no random space heater—it specifically paid tribute to the Canadian General Electric Teardrop heater, created by Toronto industrial designer Fred Moffatt in 1962. Citing concerns about the availability of information related to Canadian design, Erdmann and Falkowsky have moved on to their next major project—an online database named the Canadian Design Resource, which aims to catalogue and preserve Canadian graphic and industrial design, both by prominent figures and previously unknown designers. “Whenever we googled Canadian design, we could never find anything, so we thought there must be some way to start pushing this work into the Internet and making it accessible,” says Falkowsky. “Now we get email from Austin, Texas, to Germany from people saying, ‘I had no idea there was design in Canada.’”

But yes, there is design in Canada. And while the rest of the world might not have been aware of it before, there are legions of Canadian designers practising today who are pushing to make sure their voices are heard. If that means pandering to preconceptions about Canadian life, so be it. In the end, the joke is on the audience, because at the same time that designers are paying tribute to beavers and Mounties, they’re also sending up old-fashioned ideas of what it means to be Canadian. “Using those Canadian symbols is a way to grab people’s attention,” says Hathaway. “But I don’t want to fall into the trap of being nostalgic. I want to bring in a contemporary point of view to what’s happening in the here and now.” Laugh at their woodsy creations if you like, but once you’re done these designers hope you’ll take a closer look at what lies beneath.