CANADIAN HOLIDAYS

St. Patricks Day March 17 With only minor celebrations and virtually no official festivities, St. Patricks Day is a holiday of generally minimal importance in the lives of most Canadians, yet still one likely to be included in any list of major holidays, due to its colourful and fun reputation. Named in honour of Saint Patrick ( ), the man credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland In practice, St. Patricks Day tends to be a fairly superficial commemoration of Irish cliches, with decorations of Shamrocks, leprechauns, and plenty of green. The main profiteers of the day are pubs and bars, which host Paddys Day drink specials, including cheap Guinness and dyed green beer. Without putting too fine a point on it, to many, the day is merely an excuse to get drunk.

Canada Day July 1 July 1, 1867 was the date the Canadian Constitution was adopted and ever since, July 1 has been celebrated as the birthday of the Canadian nation, and the day Canada became a country. Held in early summer, Canada Day (known as Dominion Day until 1983) offers an opportunity for Canadians to have large parties outdoors, and is usually celebrated with neighbourhood or family barbecues, picnics, and fireworks. Many big Canadian cities will organize a whole host of official Canada Day festivities for their community, including parades, live music, and outdoor festivals, ensuring the streets are packed with patriotic revelers from sunup to sundown.Canadian Constitution

The Civic Holiday August 7 The seventh day in August is recognized as a holiday in most provinces and territories, though it goes by a wide variety of different names depending on where you are. It also tends to vary in legal status; in some provinces its a well-established day off for everyone, in other places its just a holiday for government workers. In British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan August 7 is called British Columbia Day, New Brunswick Day, and Saskatchewan Day, respectively. In Manitoba its called Terry Fox Day, after Terry Fox ( ), a noted great Canadian. In Nova Scotia its called Natal Day and in Alberta its called Heritage Day, both of which are meant to evoke ideas of celebrating provincial history. In Ontario, the name of the day actually varies by city, with Toronto calling it Simcoe Day and Ottawa calling it Colonel By Day, after John Graves Simcoe ( ) and John By ( ), two important historical figures from early Ontario. The remaining six provinces and territories dont officially recognize it as anything in particular; whether workers get the day off depends entirely on their employment contracts.great Canadianhistorical figures

Thanksgiving Second Monday in October Thanksgiving is a uniquely North American holiday, celebrated in Canada and the United States to commemorate the traditional autumn harvest and give thanks for the wealth and bounty of the New World. It originated from a government tradition of giving annual thanks for various different things before settling on this theme. The main event of Thanksgiving is an enormous, lavish Thanksgiving dinner composed of iconic North American foods, including turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. Next to Christmas, Thanksgiving is the most important family day of the year for most Canadians, and many will travel great distances in order to dine with their relatives.

Victoria Day The Monday preceding May 24 During her final years of life, Britains long-serving monarch, Queen Victoria ( ), enjoyed quite an extensive cult of popularity across the Empire, and her death prompted the Canadian Parliament to declare the late sovereigns birthday (May 24) a national holiday. Over a century later, Victoria Day still survives, though it has been retroactively redefined as the observed celebration of the current monarchs birthday, despite the fact that the actual birthday of the current monarch, Elizabeth II (b. 1926), is in April.monarch Regardless of its royal origins, in modern Canada Victoria Day is typically viewed as little more than a convenient long weekend (in some provinces, the nickname is simply theMay Long), and an excuse for short spring vacations and camping trips. In 1952, the Government of Canada abandoned the pretence of even keeping the holiday on a consistent day, and simply declared that it would always be celebrated the Monday closest to the 24th, in order to guarantee it would always create a three-day weekend. Canadians sometimes refer to this as the 2-4 long weekend, in reference to the fact that the numbers in the late Queens birthdate conveniently describe the amount of cans in a large flat of beer.