This weekend we are enjoying the Victoria Day long weekend but I wonder how many of you know the story of why we celebrate the day. Not everyone in Canada celebrates it as Victoria Day.
Victoria Day, known in French as Fête de la Reine (Celebration of the Queen) is a federal Canadian public holiday celebrated on the last Monday preceding May 25 to honour Queen Victoria.
The holiday has been observed in Canada since at least 1845, held originally on Victoria’s natural birthday of May 24. It falls on the Monday between the 18th and the 24th (inclusive) and, so, is always the second to last Monday of May.
Shortly after ‘the Canadas’ were united into the Province of Canada, there was an effort to create a new public holiday that, it was hoped, would unify English and French Canadians, transcending their religious and cultural differences. At the time, loyalty to the Crown was seen as part of our Canadian identity.
We have celebrated the sovereign’s birthday here in Canada since the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 to 1901). The Queen’s birthday would be officially designated as a public holiday by legislation passed in 1845, transforming the date from a military event into a civilian holiday and making it Canada’s first and oldest official holiday.
Victoria Day is today a federal statutory holiday, as well as a holiday in six of Canada’s 10 provinces and all three of its territories. The holiday has always been a distinctly Canadian observance and continues to be celebrated across the country as the unofficial start of the summer season.
Over the years, the holiday also served as the date that we recognized the currently reigning Canadian monarch’s official birthday.
From 1953 to 1956, the Queen’s birthday was celebrated on Victoria Day, by proclamation of the Governor General, with Her Majesty’s approval. In 1957, Victoria Day was permanently designated as the Queen’s birthday in Canada.
Royal birthdays for members of both the French and British royal families have been commemorated in various parts of Canada since the 17th century. These are not official holidays by law but are typically local celebrations. Early commemorations typically took the form of an official ceremony, like a levee, a military review, banquets and sporting events. Several different days were typically used to celebrate a sovereign’s birthday.
For example, the birth date of George III, falling on June 4, was observed from the late 18th century to decades after his death in 1820.
However, until the mid-19th century, the monarch’s birthday was more of a military occasion than a civil celebration, as it was the day when able-bodied men in the colony assembled into their militia units for their compulsory military training, as well as attending reviews and celebrations in commemoration of the monarch.
On Victoria’s 35th birthday in 1854, more than 5,000 residents of Canada West (Ontario) gathered in front of Government House (near present-day King and Simcoe streets in Toronto) to “give cheers to their Queen”.
A typical 19th-century celebration of the Queen’s birthday usually consisted of a day-long fête, including pre-dawn serenades, picnics, athletic competitions, a display of illuminations, a torch-light procession, and a gun salute at midnight.
By Confederation in 1867, Victoria Day celebrations had spread to communities throughout Ontario and Quebec and would eventually spread to other parts of the country as it expanded.
The day became a “patriotic holiday” by the 1890s. During Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, our Senate passed a bill that would fix the Queen’s birthday in perpetuity as a holiday in her honour. Much like today, it was sent to the House of Commons, where it simply languished as a private member’s bill.
It was not until after Victoria’s death in May 1901 that the Queen’s birthday was made a perpetual statutory holiday in honour of the late Queen’s position as the Mother of Confederation.
Initially it was proposed that the holiday be called Queen’s Birthday, while others proposed changing it to Queen Victoria Day or Victorian Empire Day. The name Victoria Day was selected by prime minister Wilfrid Laurier, wanting a name that was less antagonistic to French Canadians. The Crown-in-Council, the following year, designated May 24 as the official birthday of King Edward VII as well.
Victoria Day would serve as the King’s official birthday until 1910, when King George V assumed the throne. From then until 1952, Victoria Day only honoured Queen Victoria’s contribution to Canadian Confederation, with the reigning monarch’s official birthday typically being observed in June instead.
In 1952, the date for Victoria Day was made variable, changing from May 24 to the last Monday before May 25 each year, ensuring that most Canadians would receive a long weekend. Our monarch’s official birthday was, by regular vice regal proclamations, made to fall on this same day as Victoria Day every year between 1953 and 1956. On Jan, 31, 1957, the procedure was made permanent by royal proclamation.
You may recall that a group of prominent Canadians sent a petition to prime minister Stephen Harper requesting that the holiday be renamed Victoria and First Peoples Day to provide Canadians with an opportunity to honour both the Crown and our Indigenous Peoples of Canada, who share a historic bond.
I pointed out above that the holiday is not universally celebrated right across Canada. Most workplaces in Canada are regulated by the provincial or territorial governments. Therefore, although Victoria Day is a statutory holiday for federal purposes, whether an employee is entitled to a paid day off generally depends on the province or territory of residence (except for employees in federally regulated workplaces such as banks).
The status of Victoria Day in each of the provinces and territories is as follows: It is a general holiday in Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon and is a statutory holiday in British Columbia, Ontario and Saskatchewan.
Victoria Day is not a paid public holiday but is a government holiday in: Newfoundland and Labrador; Nova Scotia (considered a “non-statutory” holiday) and Prince Edward Island, although provincial legislation defines Victoria Day as a holiday. In Nunavut and New Brunswick, the date is set as a general holiday to mark the reigning sovereign’s official birthday.
Beginning in the 1920s, French Canadians in Quebec informally called the May holiday Fête de Dollard, after Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, an early colonist of New France. In 2002, the provincial government of Quebec replaced Fête de Dollard with National Patriots’ Day, which commemorates the patriots of the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837.
Federal government protocol dictates that on Victoria Day, the Royal Union Flag is to be flown from sunrise to sunset at all federal government buildings, including airports, military bases, and other Crown-owned property across the country, where physical arrangements allow (i.e., where a second flagpole exists, as the Royal Union Flag can never displace our national flag).
Several cities hold parades or have an evening of fireworks on the holiday. Some places also have a formal 21-gun salute in recognition of Queen Victoria.
Today for many people, Victoria Day serves as the unofficial marker of the end of winter and beginning of summer. Victoria Day is also a mark of the beginning of the cottage season, and gardeners begin to plant their flowers. I remember for my mother and grandmother it signalled a change in fashion with lighter-coloured summer clothing traditionally being worn from Victoria Day through to Labour Day.
Canada is the only country that still commemorates Queen Victoria with an official holiday. While researching this article, I became embroiled in the various levels of holidays and celebrations in Canada and quite frankly found it all quite confusing.
Next weekend I will examine the various categories of holidays within Canada, including but not limited to federal, provincial, and statutory holidays for federal employees.
Sources: Government of Canada – Canadian Heritage – Important Commemorative Days (website); Stories of Newmarket – An Old Ontario Town by Robert Terence Carter; The Structure of Canadian History by J. L. Finlay and D. N. Sprague; Canadian statutory holidays. Dates and information about holidays in Canada (website); 2023 Victoria Day Long Weekend in Toronto & GTA – Fireworks, Festivals & More! Published by To Do (website); History of the Town of Newmarket by Ethel Trewhella.
Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod, the History Hound, has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town’s history in partnership with NewmarketToday, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.
