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"Now Canada has an emblem" by Erin Dwyer.

Denise Dow of New Brunswick remembers spying them first on road trips through the United States to visit her aunt and uncle. They were everywhere: over doors, on mail boxes and on garages. The eagle emblem was prominent from her view in the back of the family station wagon. "I just found it curious that Canadians didn't really have something like that. We have our flag, but we don't have an emblem per se," she said. "That left an impression on me."

That was back when she was a teenager. Today, Dow is 49, a mother, an IT employee and, more recently, an entrepreneur, driven by a parent-instilled patriotism and a certain level of impatience....

Dow simply picked three beautiful maple leaves from a tree in her backyard last September. Using tracing paper, she carefully outlined and developed a banner on her computer that said "Strong & Free."

With a scroll saw and a hand-held rotary tool, she carved her emblem into a piece of wood and took it to Plastech, a Notre-Dame manufacturer. Just days before she was to meet with Canadian Tire in January, she received her first plastic prototype by courrier. "I opened the box and I cried. They were just beautiful."

Now they are in retail stores across Canada. Dow is simply waiting for the orders to come flooding in. In the meantime, she sent a box of the emblems as well as lapel pins, bumper magnets, windshield stickers and jacket crests to the Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.