What
Is Victoria Day?
Queen Victoria would wonder why this raucous
holiday is named in her honor.
By
Roy MacGregor
It used to be known as Firecracker Day, in a time when you could buy
them freely in most corner stores - and before Canada Day (July 1)
took over the title with official, formal and overly organized fireworks
displays. It used to signal the opening up of the cottage, in the
days when cottages and camps were still cottages and camps and not
out-of-reach blue-chip investments where year-round cellular telephone
reception and high-speed Internet access are given more value than
beachfront and that forgotten joy called inaccessibility. It was once
known as the Queen's Birthday, in the days when the Queen it honored
was actually born on the designated day, decades before the present
Queen's birthday, April 21, would be barely known to her subjects.
It is Victoria Day weekend in Canada, the only such day celebrated
in what was once a vast Commonwealth of nations devoted to Queen Victoria.
Australia doesn't recognize it; India, once the most Victorian of
the colonies, doesn't honor it; not even Britain bothers. Only in
Canada.
The strangest, yet in so many ways most treasured, holiday of our
year. For most of us Canadians, it has long been known as May 24th
weekend. The long weekend dates from 1845 in this part of the world,
when Canada West declared a public holiday in honor of Victoria, who
was born May 24, 1819, and ascended the throne in 1837. For a short
period it was called Empire Day, and at one point Commonwealth Day,
and it was always celebrated on the designated day, with one exception:
If the 24th fell on a Sunday, the day off would become Monday the
25th.
____________________________________
It
is difficult, in 2004, to reconcile the beginnings of this occasion
in Britain with what it has become in Canada.
____________________________________
Farmers
claimed it marked the moment in this weird climate when you could
plant without fear of frost, though in fact there are parts of Canada
where the frost-free days add up to mere hours; in some years, minutes.
After Victoria's death in 1901, Canadian Parliament made her birthday
a national holiday, and in 1952 decided that it would henceforth be
a long weekend, with the day off being the Monday preceding May 25,
thereby guaranteeing a three-day break. It is difficult, in 2004,
to reconcile the beginnings of this occasion in Britain with what
it has become in Canada. The Victorian era, of course, was about as
anal as life becomes, despite its now renowned secret vices: a society
generally considered uptight, prudish and obsessed with manners.“In
passing through a door,” Polite Society at Home and Abroad advised
young men in 1891, “the gentleman holds it open for the lady,
even though he never saw her before. He also precedes the lady in
ascending stairs, and allows her to precede him in descending.”And
elsewhere in the book: “A gentleman removes his hat when entering
a room where there are ladies. When he meets a lady friend, he should
raise his hat gracefully.”All this, of course, is difficult to
reconcile with Victoria Day 2004, when young men will wear their hats
backward, raise them for no one, and good manners will be considered
bringing back more than one beer from the cooler.
There may be a small hint in history as to how all this could happen
to a well-intentioned holiday. According to royal lore, when young
Victoria heard she had succeeded to the throne, she said to one of
her mother's ladies-in-waiting, “Am I really Queen, and can I
do what I choose by right?”Assured that this was indeed so, she
demanded a cup of green tea.
“Mamma would never let me have it,”she told the lady-in-waiting.
“Now I mean to know what harm it can do to me.”She immediately
drank three cups of it, fell ill with violent shivers, and never touched
green tea again. Swap green tea for something that comes in brown
bottles, and perhaps you too will see the potential link.
____________________________________
“Am I really Queen, and can I do what I choose by right?"
____________________________________
Even
with this dubious connection, it took years for Victoria Day to turn
into May 24th Weekend and, for those who prefer, the Long Weekend
in May. The weekend when, it seems, everyone under 25 is drunk and
rowdy and in the next campsite over. The weekend when, in some tents,
it is possible to read by the glow of the sunburn beside you. The
weekend when black flies hold their traditional banquet featuring
grown-up earlobes and children's scalps. The weekend when - thanks
to docks that must be steadied, boats that must be put in, canoes
that tip and drunks who will not listen to reason - several million
Canadian males will relate to that Seinfeld episode when a shattered
George Costanza returns from an ice-cold swimming pool. “Oh,”says
Jerry. “You mean . . . shrinkage.” “Yes,”grumbles
George, “significant shrinkage.”
It is, however, still called the long weekend - even when the May
Short Weekend might be more accurate.
 |
|
This
article first appeared in the Globe and Mail.
Roy MacGregor writes for the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s
daily national papers. |
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