Canada
A royal proclamation issued on 31 January 1957 established the last Monday before 25 May as the Sovereign's Birthday (in French: fête du souverain), the date on which the reigning Canadian monarch's official birthday would be celebrated. The monarch's birthday had been observed in Canada since 1845, when the parliament of the Province of Canada passed a statute to officially recognize Queen Victoria's birthday, 24 May. Over the ensuing decades after Victoria's death in 1901 (at which time the Monday before 25 May became known by law as Victoria Day), the official date in Canada of the reigning sovereign's birthday changed through various royal proclamations: for Edward VII it continued by yearly proclamation to be observed on 24 May, but was 3 June for George V and 23 June for Edward VIII (their actual birthdays).
Edward VIII abdicated the Canadian throne on 11 December 1936, three days before the birthday of his brother, the new king of Canada, George VI. The King expressed to his ministers his wish that his birthday not be publicly celebrated, in light of the recent circumstances. But, the Prime Minister at the time, William Lyon Mackenzie King, the rest of Cabinet, and Governor General the Lord Tweedsmuir felt otherwise, seeing such a celebration as a way to begin the reign on a positive note. George VI's official birthday in Canada was thereafter marked on various days between 20 May and 14 June.
The first official birthday of Elizabeth II was the last to be celebrated in June; the haphazard format was abandoned in 1952, when the Governor-General-in-Council moved Empire Day and an amendment to the law moved Victoria Day both to the Monday before 25 May, and the monarch's official birthday in Canada was by regular vice-regal proclamations made to fall on this same date every year between 1953 and 1957, when the link was made permanent. The two holidays are in law entirely distinct except for being appointed to be observed on the same day. The Queen's official birthday is marked by the firing of an artillery salute in the national and provincial capitals and the flying of the Royal Union Flag on buildings belonging to the federal Crown, if there is a second pole available.
The reigning Canadian monarch has been in Canada for his or her official birthday twice. The first time was 20 May 1939, when King George VI was on a coast-to-coast tour of Canada and his official birthday was celebrated with a Trooping the Colour ceremony on Parliament Hill. The second time was when Queen Elizabeth II was in Canada from 17 – 25 May 2005, to mark the centennial of the entries of Saskatchewan and Alberta into Confederation; no government-initiated events, aside from those dictated by normal protocol, were organized to acknowledge the official birthday. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, heir to the Canadian throne, in 2012 attended events marking the Queen's Birthday in Saint John, New Brunswick, and Toronto, Ontario.
Read more about this topic: Queen's Official Birthday
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“This universal exhibition in Canada of the tools and sinews of war reminded me of the keeper of a menagerie showing his animals’ claws. It was the English leopard showing his claws.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least several gentlemen or “squires,” there is but one to a seigniory.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)