Remembrance Day should be a federally mandated statutory holiday.
Period.
The fact that in 2019 Remembrance Day is not a statutory holiday in every province boggles my mind. Currently, Remembrance Day is only a statutory holiday in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nunavut. It isn’t a stat in the countriy’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec. Nor is it a stat in Nova Scotia or the North West Territories.
Unfortunately, recent attempts at making Nov. 11 a national holiday have been unsuccessful. In 2014, former NDP MP for Scarborough Southwest, Dan Harris, introduced a private member’s bill (C-597), which looked like it had a chance of becoming law after receiving overwhelming support from all parties in the initial states, before stalling out during third reading.
In 2010, MPP Lisa MacLeod introduced ‘Respect for Ontario Veterans, Soldiers & War Dead Act,’ to the Ontario legislature. Like the Harris bill, it too was defeated.
One of the groups opposed to making Remembrance Day a statutory holiday is, surprisingly enough, the Royal Canadian Legion. They have expressed concern that many Canadians, especially schoolchildren, will take it as a meaningless day off and not attend a public ceremony. The Legion also argued schools provide structure and ensure kids are attending some kind of event on Nov. 11.
That being said, attending a public ceremony is difficult if one has to work and regardless if Remembrance Day is a stat or not schools will always have some sort of act of remembrance.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that there is opposition in enshrining Remembrance Day as a statutory holiday across the county because its creation wasn’t a slam dunk.
Remembrance Day was first observed in 1919, throughout the British Commonwealth as a way to honour the more than 60,000 Canadians who died in First World War for the service in their country. That first year it was called Armistice Day and it was observed on Nov. 11, the day hostilities ceased in the Second World War.
Two years later the date was changed to the second Monday in November, creating a single long weekend linked to Thanksgiving in large part due to pressure from the business community. They argued that having a set day that would fall on a different day of the week, would cause too much of a disruption to businesses.
The new Armistice Day proved to be unpopular with veterans and the public alike and in 1931, two B.C. MP’s, A.W. Neil and C.W. Dickie, introduced two separate motions in the House Of Commons: one to change the Armistice Day to Remembrance Day and the other to set the date back to Nov. 11.
As for myself, I tend to agree with Lyle Saumer, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran who served with the Princess Patricia Light Infantry, including two peacekeeping tours in Cyprus. He said it best when he said every day should be Remembrance Day, but failing that, our veterans deserve to have a true national day of remembrance.