Celebrating Canada: Holidays, National Days, and the Crafting of Identities ed. by Matthew Hayday and Raymond Blake (review)

Celebrating Canada is designed to show what a study of national days tells us about 'the construction, portrayal, and contestation of Canada's various national and subnational identities' (p. 5). Some of the chapters do this more effectively than others. Gillian Leitch's 'Negotiating National Identities in Montreal's Parades, 1840–1880' is a fascinating study but the national identities she is referring to are the ethnic identities that existed before Confederation. Peter Stevens traces how Thanksgiving Day was transformed from a religious into a secular holiday but he downplays the continuing importance of Ontario's Protestant Churches after 1914 and tries too hard to 'refute the claim that Canadians were a British-orientated people' (p. 75). The four chapters that focus on Victoria Day, the most important national holiday in English-speaking Canada until the 1950s, and on Empire Day reveal just how deeply committed Canadians were to the British connection. Even in French Canada, Joel Belliveau and Marcel Martel point out, there was some limited sympathy with Empire Day until the Conscription Crisis of 1917, though they argue quite wrongly that British imperialism enjoyed little support 'among the working classes, or among the nation's farmers' (p. 126). Similarly, Brittney Anne Bos and Allison Ward, in their study of the celebration of Empire Day in Hamilton, suggest–without much evidence–that there was considerable resistance from the comparatively small non-British communities in Hamilton between 1920 and 1950 'to the festivities of Empire Day' (p. 152). The strength of imperial sentiment, however, comes across in Teresa Iacobella's chapter on the evolution of remembrance day in Canada and the three chapters focusing on Dominion Day. Forrest Pass insightfully points out that British Columbians 'experienced nationalism locally, and the national holiday and regional politics benefitted from mutual reinforcement' (p. 192), Mike Benbough-Jacksson examines Dominion Day celebrations in Britain from 1900–19, and Lianbi Zhu and Timothy Baycroft show how Chinese Humiliation Day emerged as the Chinese counterpart to Dominion Day celebrations. Three chapters examine the emergence of Canada Day, a by-product of de-Dominionisation, as Stuart Ward points out in 'Refitting the National Fabric at Empire's End'. Matthew Hayday gives us a detailed study of the efforts of successive Canadian governments to find a successful formula for celebrating Dominion Day/Canada Day during this transition, though he notes that 'the British heritage never completely disappeared from these events' (p. 299). Raymond Blake and Bailey Antonyishyn give us an idealized portrait of Trudeau's part in this process, while admitting that it was Trudeau who 'politicised Canada's birthday celebrations' (p. 316). Not surprisingly, Marc-André Gagnon points out, Quebec responded by turning Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day into a clearer affirmation of Quebec's national identity, while the Acadians, as Michael Poplyanski shows, debated but rejected abandoning 'le 15 août' as their national day. The final paper examines the 'Curious Case of National Flag of Canada Day'–the creation of a national day that no one other than a few Liberal politicians ever wanted. In sum, this is a book of essays that warrants careful (but cautious) reading for those interested in the crafting of the Canadian national identity.