After hearing U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and suggestions about annexing Canada, Londoner Mike Jones decided to respond in a uniquely Canadian way—from the skies.

The semi-retired pilot and flight instructor recalled seeing the maple leaf and thinking, “It’s just points and straight lines, so I figured I could fly it.”

Driven by patriotism, Jones carefully planned a pro-Canadian flight path. Using an outline of a maple leaf, he overlaid it on a map of southwestern Ontario and transferred the coordinates to his iPad. The flight plan was then uploaded to his airplane’s avionics system.

On Wednesday afternoon, Jones took off from London in his Grob G 115 fixed-wing aircraft. Over the course of two hours and 240 nautical miles, he traced a near-perfect maple leaf in the skies.

“It’s not as perfect as it looks,” Jones admitted with a chuckle. “Every turn, I was trying to judge how tight to make it. But I made it big enough that my mistakes don’t show that badly.”

What began as a private patriotic gesture quickly went viral. While Jones was in the air, flight enthusiasts around the world were tracking his journey online.

Flightradar24, a popular aviation site, posted his maple leaf flight path on its Facebook page. Within a day, it had garnered 18,000 likes and 11,000 comments, propelling Jones’ creative tribute to Canadian pride into the spotlight.