Canadians Are Debating What "Canada" Emojis Should Exist For World Emoji Day

For those of you that didn’t know, July 17 is "World Emoji Day". A day for the world to get together and celebrate all that emojis are, and the impact they have on our modern communication. 

While, at first glance, emoji day does seem like an unnecessary and somewhat trivial international celebration, it has given Canadians a reason to look at the current library of emojis, and decide what could be added to give the existing icons a bit of a ‘Canada’ injection.

When it comes to emojis, people tend to fall into two categories. Firstly, there are those who sprinkle emojis into every single message, and can’t press ‘send’ without a smiley face, a love heart or a little poop- your messages just don't look right without an emoji! Secondly, there are those who Will. Not. Use. Emojis. Ever. Because they are often unnecessary and sometimes, even a little bit cringey.

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no doubt that emojis are an increasing part of our modern communication, and likely to be even more so in the future. In fact, in honor of World Emoji Day, emoji big-boys Apple and Google have announced that some new icons will hit our screens later in the year, and some of them sound pretty awesome.

Firstly, the most important emojis joining the pre-existing image library will be interracial couple emojis, same-sex couples characters and emojis with a wide range of abilities, including one with a wheelchair. The emoji world is growing and expanding, with the aim of being able to more accurately represent the people behind the devices. 

There will also be more food options, to help with those pesky Instagram captions, including waffles, falafel and garlic butter, and, if this wasn’t enough, some adorable little animals will also be added, including a long-awaited sloth, orangutan, a skunk and a flamingo!

To celebrate World Emoji Day in Canada, CBC created a number of extremely Canadian emojis, and asked the country ‘which Canadian themed emoji should be added to the emoji library?’ Naturally, the responses were pretty hilarious, and oh so Canadian. 

In their original tweet, CBC had created four Canada-focused emojis, including a maple syrup icon, a beaver, a toque and a butter tart. However, Canadians were quick to point out that to be truly Canadian, there would have to be some sort of combination of them all.

One user wrote, “A beaver wearing a toque with a [maple leaf emoji] on it.” While another added a similar idea, “Hard to choose but the Canadian Beaver is a mighty beast to be proud of!  If we could put him in a toque with a maple leaf we can make him instantly recognizable.”

A number of Twitter users were also quick to point out the slightly unusual looking butter tart emoji. When it came to whether the butter tart should be one of Canada’s new emojis, one user was quick to note, “The butter tart will only inflame the old raisin debate. And that one appears to have almonds. Which is really weird.”

Some other Canadian Twitter users took the opportunity to mention the things they thought should be a Canadian emoji that were not on the list already. Popular suggestions included poutine, Tim Hortons, a Nanaimo bar, and a moose. 

One user wrote, “There isn't an emoji that properly expresses "sorry." When asked what this would look like, the user responded, “Complete and utter crushing sadness that you accidently [sic] slightly bumped someone's beer. However you capture that in an emoji.”

Unfortunately, unless Apple or Google's emoji officials are checking this thread, for now, Canadians will just have to settle for our flag emoji, a maple leaf emoji, the hockey stick, lacrosse stick, curling emoji, and of course any emoji that has to do with snow.