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James Carson, a professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., who grew up near Asheville, N.C., said it’s perplexing to see the flag used in Canada.

“A Canadian appropriating this totally politically charged symbol from an American context and then using it up here, it’s hard to understand because that flag’s meaning is directly tied to the American history of race relations,” he said. “What it could mean to a Canadian is beyond me. And that guy might think ‘Yeah this is a symbol of the south and I’m trying to brand my restaurant in a particular way,’ but the region he’s trying to invoke would not see that flag as its symbol. It’s a symbol of a very particular subset within that region.”

If a barbecue restaurant in Tennessee were decorated with Confederate flags, an African American would probably steer clear, Mr. Carson added. Even the Confederate flag as good ol’ boy symbol still has a core that’s “pro-white,” he said.

“It’s always there with the flag. There’s just nowhere to escape that.”

Redneck culture can be sustained without displaying the Confederate flag and so too can the memory of those who fought for the Confederacy be valorized, said Craig Simpson, a professor of history at the University of Western Ontario who studies 19th century American history and the secession crisis.

“As far as the war itself is concerned, I would be perfectly happy with the following formulation: It is and was about slavery. But it was not only about slavery,” he said. “It was about the loss of their particular way of life, a certain culture and so forth. You cannot explain all of it without taking account of those variables.”