History can often seem disconnected from our day-to-day lives.
Victoria Day, celebrating the birthday of Queen Victoria who was on the throne when Confederation came about, may strike some as a pleasant anachronism but also as good an excuse as any for a statutory holiday.
And the fact that the holiday has become the "Queen's Birthday," although our present Queen was actually born on April 21, adds an element of the pleasingly eccentric to the practice. Yet fireworks, 21-gun salutes and other celebrations will take place.
It was the Parliament of the United Province of Canada that declared May 24 a holiday to celebrate the Queen's birthday back in 1845. A law was passed after Victoria's death in 1901 by the Parliament of the Confederated Canada fixing the 24th of May as a statutory and official holiday.
And whatever the actual birthday of the monarch of the day, Canada has celebrated the sovereign's birthday on May 24, or the Monday of May preceding the 25th.
And while some anglophobes might be less than accepting of the proposition, Victoria Day is actually part of our nationalist and uniquely Canadian identity. The relationship is quite fundamental.
In the period between 1775 and 1812, our American neighbours developed their nationality, their form of democracy and their independence against the British Crown. We chose, both through the protection by the British Crown of Quebec francophone religious, linguistic and civil law traditions (Quebec Act, 1774) and the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists from the American colonies, to build a society that would be democratic and orderly within the ambit of Crown and Empire.
It would be some 25 years after English, French, Dutch, Irish, Scottish and First Nations Canadians would tactically embarrass and repel American invaders at key fronts along the Quebec-Ontario-U.S. border when Victoria would take the Empire's throne – at a time when progress toward more responsible governing institutions had begun in the Canadian colonies.
Having settled who we were not and what and who we chose not to become, Canadians, through leaders like Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, Robert Baldwin, John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier, Charles Tupper and Joseph Howe, engaged fully in deciding who we wanted to be and how we wanted to organize and govern our own unique Canadian society and system of government.
The role of the Crown in the maintenance of who we are and our own brand of national identity remains a compelling force. Our head of state is not elected. Prime ministers and premiers are elected under the rules of responsible governments reporting to democratically chosen legislatures and parliaments. But the continuity of the state, our underlying values and principles, equality before the law, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence are carried forward by the institution of the Crown.
It reminds all our elected leaders, the civil servants and political staffers who serve in the cause of government or party that there is a higher authority that can and would respond to any effort to violate the Constitution or the core conventions of our democracy and society where the rule of law is supreme. It reminds Canadians that in the kind of democracy we have built, "peace, order and good government" actually reflect a different value set than "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Which is why the oath of allegiance for new Canadian citizens includes a statement of loyalty to the Queen – and why it always should. It is an affirmation that however we may shape and grow a pluralist and compelling national identity that embraces and welcomes a multiracial and multinational future so fundamental to our economic and social success, it is vital that we retain the dimension of our political and historical identity that sets us apart from all others.
In no other francophone or Commonwealth country, in no other country in the Americas, in no other country on the planet has the interplay between the culture and civilization of France, the history and Empire of Great Britain, and the French civil and British common law interacted to produce a country like Canada: federal in structure, compassionate in disposition, welcoming and embracing of many cultures and creeds, bilingual and multicultural, and the envy of many worldwide.
Queen Victoria and those who have followed have not ruled over perfect times, governments or societies. And celebrating this holiday should not be about complacency. On poverty, on fairness, on equality of opportunity, we have miles to go.
But whether we gather at a local park for hot dogs, pack a lunch of samosas and curries or head to the cottage with a crisp new flag for the pole that needs painting, it is good to reflect not only on where we are headed, but also on where we have been. Whatever part of the world we, our parents, our grandparents or our great-great-grandparents left to join the Canadian family, the nature of that family, the manner of our reception and the frame within which we now draw the Canadian picture, reflects much of what took root during Victoria's reign.
In war and peace, the best part of Victoria's legacy, economic modernization, parliamentary reform and opening the world to trade and commerce, the spreading of British laws and administration, all took root and acquired a Canadian identity between 1837 and now.
Our civility, freedom and relative prosperity emerged from these roots, remarkably strengthened by all who have come since. Which, when one thinks of the challenges others face and the opportunities we share in Canada, there is actually quite a lot for Canadians to celebrate on this May 24 weekend, and for many centuries to come.
Hugh Segal is the junior Conservative Senator from Ontario (Kingston-Frontenac-Leeds).