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Canada Day is back to the old normal
There are granted to be some troublemakers out and about on Monday, but they won’t be hogging the spotlight
The past half-decade has seen official commemorations of Canadian pride reduced to a dull glow — and the effect was always most visible on July 1. Finally, in 2024, it seems that pride is starting to rekindle.
The great dimming arguably began in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated public health restrictions gave way to smaller, more different celebrations and opened the door to festive downsizing in general. It was supposed to be temporary. Protests began to cast small shadows across the country too, demanding the cancellation of Canada Day from Vancouver to Saskatoon — an echo, somewhat, of that year’s George Floyd protests in the United States.
Canada Day became even darker in 2021. News surfaced that year of hundreds of soil disturbances near a former residential school in B.C. No graves were confirmed at the time and none have been confirmed since — to this day, the anomalies detected by ground-penetrating radar could be roots, rocks or clumps of clay — but the worst was assumed. In June 2021, federal flags were lowered to half-mast in response, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted that the Peace Tower flag on Parliament Hill remain lowered on July 1.
This set the tone for celebrations country-wide. Some Canadian cities went as far as cancelling their festivities, including Fredericton, N.B., Victoria, B.C., Penticton, B.C., St. Catherines, Ont. and the Yukon’s Dawson City. Elsewhere, bad actors even turned to crime: 10 Alberta churches were vandalized on July 1, and the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg saw its statues of Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria toppled.
Jack’s Note: This year we can celebrate the end of that head monkey and his galloping horde running this country at the moment. That’s worth a beer or three. Thank you Pierre!
