Diane Smith thought her restaurant was done for this past weekend when it became the target of angry American reviews.

Smith is the owner of The Olde Red Hen Restaurant, in Collingwood, an eatery unaffiliated with the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, where White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was dining last week when she was asked to leave, apparently due to her role as spokesperson for the Trump administration.

Despite the restaurants having nothing in common besides their name, supporters of Sanders and U.S. President Donald Trump made their anger known on the Ontario resto’s Facebook page.

Smith first started seeing the negative reviews on Friday night.

“PUKE!” wrote one commenter.

“The worst place to eat. Won’t eat there again,” wrote another, who later doubled down on the negative review when it was pointed out that they had likely never dined in the Canadian diner. “Lookd (sic) at all these fools getting mad over a stupid restaurant,” the commenter wrote.

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Smith told the Star, “I got a lot of reviews that were very negative, saying ‘Oh, I wouldn’t eat here because of their politics, boycott, it’s terrible, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant with their political views.’ And I was like, ‘what political views?’ ”

After some online research, Smith found out about the Sanders incident at the Red Hen in Virginia. She immediately started to respond to the comments, letting them know they had the wrong restaurant.

Canadians and Americans alike jumped in to support the Collingwood restaurant, leaving five-star reviews and offering geography lessons to those who mistakenly ended up on the wrong Facebook page.

Some American reviewers apologized for their mistake. “I accidentally gave this restaurant a bad review,” one comment reads. “I thought I was responding to the restaurant in the States. I am so very sorry. I tried to delete my review a few times and something isn’t working, so I am sincerely apologizing!”

Reviews, both negative and positive, kept pouring in to the restaurant’s page. Most of them were American, Smith believes.

“I started getting reviewers responding to each other, saying, ‘oh, you’re just a Democrat, you can’t read,’ or ‘oh, you’re just a Republican, you can’t spell.’ It was just very political, and, you know, had nothing to do with my restaurant.”

Smith knew the Trip Advisor reviews could harm tourism in Collingwood, saying, “I’m not worried about my local business; I’m worried about the town, itself, getting bad reviews.”

“But, for the last day and a half, all I’ve been getting is love,” Smith said. “I’m very appreciative of the support I’ve been getting. It’s not about the publicity. I don’t need that. It’s all about getting my name cleared.”

“Beginning on Friday, I thought, ‘there’s no way I’m coming back from this,’ ” Smith said. “But the support I’ve been getting is overwhelming.”

By Monday, hundreds of supportive Canadians and Americans had chimed in with positive reviews.

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Similar mix-ups have occurred in the U.S., with the owners of The Red Hen in D.C. fending off negative tweets. There, the restaurant responded to tweets that derided them for their “affiliation” with the Lexington Red Hen. The restaurant responded by repeatedly posting the definition of the word “unaffiliated.”

In New Jersey, another Red Hen restaurant’s ratings went from 4.8 stars to three stars, its manager Elizabeth Pope said.

And, in Connecticut, yet another unaffiliated Red Hen restaurant received 50 angry phone calls by noon on Saturday, owner Shelley Deproto reported .

Many on Twitter failed to understand that having the same name did not mean that the restaurants are owned by the same people.

Inori Roy is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @royinori

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