Holidays & Commemoration | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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  • Article

    Labour Day in Canada

    Labour Day, the first Monday in September, has been a statutory holiday in Canada since 1894. It originated in the first workers’ rallies of the Victorian era. Historically, workers marked the day with various activities. These included parades, speeches, games, amateur competitions and picnics. The holiday promoted working-class solidarity and belonging during a time of rapid industrialization. Since the Second World War, fewer and fewer people have participated in Labour Day activities. Nevertheless, it remains a statutory holiday. Many Canadians now devote the Labour Day holiday to leisure activity and family time.

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  • Article

    Mi-Carême

    Mi-Carême, Mid-Lent, in French Canadian tradition, is the time when people dress up in disguise and go from house to house asking for treats, singing and dancing in the Mumming tradition.

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  • Article

    'Mimkwamlis Potlatch (Memkumlis Raid)

    On 25 December 1921, a Potlatch ceremony was held in the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw village of ‘Mimkwamlis (also spelled Memkumlis, and also known as Village Island). The Potlatch ceremony was illegal at the time. Officers of the federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs (see Federal Departments of Indigenous and Northern Affairs), as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and, according to some sources, the British Columbia provincial police learned of this Potlatch. They arrested 45 people for participating in the Potlatch. Approximately half of the people were sent to prison for periods ranging from two to three months. Hundreds of precious Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw ceremonial objects were confiscated. Some of these items were sold to collectors and wound up in museums without the consent of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw people. The arrests related to the ‘Mimkwamlis Potlatch of 1921 were an example of police and government abuse of Indigenous Peoples. It is a further example of the attempted cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Canada (see Genocide and Indigenous Peoples in Canada).

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    https://d3d0lqu00lnqvz.cloudfront.net/MimkwamlisPotlatch/umista_cultural_centre_web.jpg 'Mimkwamlis Potlatch (Memkumlis Raid)
  • Article

    National Indigenous Peoples Day

    Celebrated in Canada every 21 June, National Indigenous Peoples Day is an official day of celebration to recognize and honour the heritage, cultures and valuable contributions to society by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. National Indigenous Peoples Day is the same day as the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) and was chosen for its important symbolism to many Indigenous peoples (see Religion and Spirituality of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.) This day has been celebrated as a statutory territorial holiday in the Northwest Territories since 2001 and in the Yukon since 2017.

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  • Article

    Orange Shirt Day

    At an event in Williams Lake, British Columbia, in May 2013, the orange shirt was presented as a symbol of Indigenous peoples’ suffering caused by residential schools, which operated from the 1830s to the 1990s. The event led to the annual 30 September Orange Shirt Day as a means of remembrance, teaching and healing. In June 2021, the federal government declared 30 September a national statutory holiday to coincide with Orange Shirt Day. (See also Reconciliation in Canada.)

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  • Article

    Passover in Canada

    Passover (Pesach) is Judaism's spring ritual commemorating the Israelites' liberation from slavery in Egypt, as told in the Haggadah. The celebration is one of three pilgrim festivals and lasts up to eight days (see Religious Festivals).

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  • Article

    Religion

    ​Religion (from the Latin, religio, "respect for what is sacred") may be defined as the relationship between human beings and their transcendent source of value.

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  • Article

    Religious Festivals

    Each major religion practised in Canada has, in addition to its own system of beliefs, a way of marking the passage of time and celebrating sacred events. Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Christians and Muslims enrich the religious and cultural diversity of Canada. However, the integration of these celebrations and beliefs does not happen smoothly, and sometimes raises controversy.

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  • Article

    Religious Music

    Religious music may be said to have begun in Canada with the arrival of the first settlers, though the indigenous peoples used music in a religious context prior to the 16th century.

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  • Article

    Remembrance Day in Canada

    Remembrance Day is a yearly memorial day that is observed in many Commonwealth countries, including Canada, to remember those who died in military service, and honour those who served in wartime. It is observed across Canada each year on 11 November — the anniversary of the Armistice agreement of 1918 that ended the First World War. On Remembrance Day, public ceremonies and church services often include the playing of “Last Post,” a reading of the fourth stanza of the poem “For the Fallen,” and two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. Wreaths are laid at local war memorials and assemblies are held in schools. Millions of Canadians wear red poppy pins in the weeks leading up to and on 11 November in remembrance. In 2020 and 2021, Remembrance Day services and events were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many events were either held online, cancelled or limited to a small number of participants due to fear of contagion.

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  • Article

    Thanksgiving in Canada

    The first official, annual Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated on 6 November 1879, though Indigenous peoples in Canada have a history of celebrating the fall harvest that predates the arrival of European settlers. Sir Martin Frobisher and his crew are credited as the first Europeans to celebrate a Thanksgiving ceremony in North America, in 1578. They were followed by the inhabitants of New France under Samuel de Champlain in 1606. The celebration featuring the uniquely North American turkey, squash and pumpkin was introduced to Nova Scotia in the 1750s and became common across Canada by the 1870s. In 1957, Thanksgiving was proclaimed an annual event to occur on the second Monday of October. It is an official statutory holiday in all provinces and territories except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

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  • Article

    The Ashkenaz Festival

    The Ashkenaz Foundation is a community-based non-profit organization dedicated to fostering an increased awareness of Yiddish and Jewish culture through the arts. Ashkenaz places equal emphasis on the need for preservation and innovation within this cultural milieu.

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    https://d3d0lqu00lnqvz.cloudfront.net/media/media/fbe857f5-6095-4a09-9eab-2d578f7e872e.jpg The Ashkenaz Festival
  • Editorial

    The First Thanksgiving in North America

    The following article is an editorial written by The Canadian Encyclopedia staff. Editorials are not usually updated. It has become common knowledge that the first Thanksgiving in North America was held by Sir Martin Frobisher and his crew in Nunavut in 1578. There are those — mainly Americans upset by the thought of having their holiday co-opted — who argue that it wasn't a “real” Thanksgiving. I would counter that Frobisher had reason to give thanks, and that giving thanks was an important aspect of Elizabethan society, so it would have been a natural thing for him and his men to do.

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  • Article

    Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

    The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village is a living history site, located 50 km east of Edmonton, Alberta, on the Yellowhead Highway near Elk Island National Park.

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  • Article

    Winter Festivals

    Quebec Winter Carnival night parade, February 16, 2013 in Quebec City. \r\nImage: The Canadian Press/photographer Jacques\r\nBoissinot.\r\nPreviousNext In addition to the hardships of establishing themselves in a new land, the enormous toil involved in clearing and cultivating vast areas of wilderness and establishing the formal societal structures that would enable them to cooperatively survive in a new and unfamiliar environment, Canada's early settlers were faced with a climate unlike any that many of them had experienced...

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