Victoria Day 2009

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Happy Victoria Day to all of you Canadians out there. It's a beautiful day here in Toronto, the first (unofficial) day of summer, and I've actually been out tending to the lawn, gardening, and washing my car all afternoon -- and watching, from time to time, the Jays pull off the sweep over the White Sox.

Enjoy the rest of the May Two-Four. (Which this year falls early on the One-Eight.)

Oh, and if you'd like to look back on this national holiday of ours -- Quebec takes the day off but doesn't, of course, celebrate anything Victorian (or British) -- think about the Germanization of the British Monarchy, for Victoria was pretty much entirely German, and about the British Empire, for better and for worse, and about everything that is now understood to be "Victorian," for better and for worse, and about how crazy it is that a country like Canada, so British and yet so not, not now, still celebrates Victoria's birthday, and still has, as its head of state, a monarch who is not our own. (Am I an anti-monarchist? Do I think Canada should become a republic? Well, sort of, but no, perhaps not. Canada's not so bad the way it is now, even it means retaining as ours the soap opera that is the current British Royal Family, Victoria's descendants.)

Now excuse me, please, for I must go make dinner.

I'll have some new posts this evening.

-- Michael