By Will Stos
The green beer is gone, the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons removed from lapels and the porcelain gods have been appeased for another year.
But the campaign to make St. Patrick’s Day a new national holiday in Canada will not fade into memory so quickly.
In the past month, over 90,000 people have signed up to become members of the Guinness Party of Canada after the popular Irish beer company launched a political drive to lobby for a day off on March 17.
Creating a new holiday would appeal to many working Canadians who already have fewer days off from work than most people living in of the Western world; when Labatt ran a similar campaign to create a new long-weekend during the summer, many Canadians were similarly inspired to take up the cause.
While the beer companies’ motives for lobbying for more time-off during peak drinking periods are questionable, the idea of a new national holiday shouldn’t be dismissed.
But would recognizing St. Patrick’s Day as a national day of celebration be the best way to answer Canadians’ calls for another dayoff? Not really.
Of course, March 17 is a day when everyone is a little bit Irish, but a multicultural nation should either celebrate all of its peoples or its own distinct history.
Recently a group of historians has tried to raise civic pride and historical awareness among Canadians by promoting the adoption of a Prime Ministers’ Day. The new holiday would remember such great leaders as John A. Macdonald, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Wilfrid Laurier, Lester B. Pearson, John Thompson and Alexander Mackenzie.
If the last couple of names don’t sound familiar, it’s all the more reason to better educate Canada’s citizens about past leaders and their accomplishments.
Flag Day on Feb. 15, a time to celebrate Canada’s most famous symbol and its official adoption by the House of Commons, is another date that should be considered for a national holiday.
Although there was heated debate by parliamentarians over Pearson’s decision to replace the flag that prominently displayed the Union Jack as a reminder of Canada’s colonial past, once the new flag was unveiled it quickly won over the respect of some of the hold-outs.
Combined with Expo ’67 two years later, the new flag highlighted Canadians’ immense optimism and national pride.
The day remains an enduring reminder of the great nation-building of the past and tremendous hope for Canada’s future domestic and international accomplishments.
If these days are deemed too nationalist or political, an immigration appreciation day might be more suitable.
Immigrants have brought their own culture, knowledge and ideas to their new homeland to make Canada a unique and vibrant nation.
Acknowledging their contributions during a national day of celebration would be an appropriate way to recognize and appreciate Canada’s cultural mosaic.
So let’s propose a toast to Guinness for bringing the issue of creating a new national holiday back to the forefront of public discussion.
But the holiday must be a truly national event that salutes this nation’s history and its traditions and not just the culture of one ethnic group.
Canadians would surely raise a glass of green beer to that suggestion.