Renaming the Long Weekend of May

[dewline]

Okay, Bob Hepburn at the Toronto Star has been arguing for the better part of this past ten years - actually all the way back to May 2008! - that we need to get rid of Victoria Day. Not that we need to rid ourselves of a long weekend at the end of May each Gregorian-calendar year in Canada, because we don't. We really don't. But rather, Hepburn argues that the name of and reason for such events needs changing up. His latest such reminder of his opinion was published on 20 May 2021.

After all, we're supposedly celebrating a fictional birthday for the very real British monarch who signed off on setting up Confederation in 1867 after all the drinking contests, under-the-table mutual blackmail and whatever else was going on at those three negotiation sessions that the "fathers of Confederation" put together in the middle years of the 1860's.

Does Queen Victoria - specifically - really count for a lot with most Canadians and Canadian-adjacent people these days? Our local Monarchists aside?

One of his suggestions for the change, Peacekeepers' Day, is already officially observed by the authorities, but is not a statutory holiday. It's observed by the UN on 29 May, and by the Canadian federal government on 9 August. Maybe we need our feds to harmonize with the UN on this? Maybe not?

Some other options were mentioned, too...I'm trying to get at Pressreader via OPL's website in order to refresh my memories of those. And I found them: "First Nations Day" and "Prime Ministers' Day". National Indigenous Peoples' Day is already set for 21 June each year. The latter option...is not appetizing to my ears.

Comments

[jhetley]

In Maine, "The Queen's Birthday" is the traditional start of black fly season, the weekend they start to bite. You could make use of that.

[dewline]

Shall we argue for "Insect Defence Day"?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Perhaps there is a Fisherman of good Canada repute, since once the black flies are biting, it's time for anglers to go be bitten, fish or no.

[cmcmck]

Other than the fact she was rather a fascinating adventurous and broad minded woman in a time when people weren't. She adopted an African daughter and was close friends with Felix Mendelssohn who was, of course, Jewish and contrary to popular belief, she was often amused.

[dewline]

Such strengths of character should certainly be made more widely known, then...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Queen Victoria's widow-age overshadows her multifaceted career as a Constitutional Monarch. Such as her stint as a young mother and Queen touring the Crystal Palace in a very calculated Middle Class manner to defang the rather real Lord Byron Ur-aristocrat potential messaging.

Imagine if it hadn't been Archduke Ferdinand in the 20th century but a reprise of France's Terror in 19th century London---

Wasn't Felix a naturalized Christian by that point? I have difficulties keeping Disraeli and other later converts timestamped, much as Trollope had a ten pound note turn into two five pound notes within a sealed envelope.

[cmcmck]

He was, but to anti semites that had no meaning.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

True enough.

[sabotabby]

Decolonization Day. As separate from First Nations Day and Indigenous People's Day.

Gardening Day.

[agoodwinsmith]

Most people here call it "May Long Weekend" and I like that because it is fairly accurate. One could call it Land Theft Day, or The Last Barf of Winter, or even The First Stationary Stat. (Stationery? Stationary? Non-Moving Feast?)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Statutory Stationery--Deals were done, we changed the letterhead.