The stupid origins of Canada Day; also: birthdays are stupid too

EVAN JOHNSON STAFF

Holiday Schmoliday is a column in which a grouchy writer complains about upcoming or recently celebrated holidays.

Canada Day, Schmanada Schmay

Ottawa. Monday, July 1, 1867: with the bitter October winds violently thrashing his tufts of stately, aubergine hair, Sir John A. Macdonald, father of our country and raging, vomit-besmeared alcoholic, stares into the ineluctable expanse of the St. Lawrence River and contemplates his many achievements. He knows that dozens of miles away, in London, England, the British Parliament is passing a law or an act or whatever, finally declaring Canada to be “a kingdom in its own right” and also “the best Harry Potter movie yet.”

Exactly one year later, Canada celebrates the first anniversary of its confederation. At first the holiday is known as Dominion Day, in honour of the fact that that’s what they decided to call it. Nobody actually celebrates it. After all, there is butter to churn, corn to husk, indigenous peoples to oppress. From 1923 to 1947, another oppressed peoples, the Chinese of Canada, boycott Dominion Day to protest this country’s racist immigration policies. That’s the right idea, Chinese!

In 1958, under the leadership of zany prime minister John Diefenbaker, the government steps up the celebrations, which continue to become more and more prominent throughout the late 1960s. Hundreds of years later, in 1982, the name of the holiday is officially changed to Canada Day.

Canada Day! The French call it “Fête du Canada,” which translates roughly to “Feast of the Canaanites”; the daring and subversive Canadian press has cheekily dubbed it “Canada’s Birthday.” Whatever you call it, Canada Day is a stupid waste of my time and I hate it. For one thing, it’s sexist. It’s so sexist, in fact, that I’m not even going to back that claim up with any reasoning or evidence. It also features fireworks, the most decadent and overrated kind of explosion there is. Fireworks bring nothing to the table intellectually, and, what’s more, they’ll probably give you worms.

Also, I find “Canada Day” hard to say — it’s that double “d” that kills. Usually the best I can muster is “Canana Nay,” and even then my retainer usually falls out. How do you think that makes me feel? Not good, Canada.

Birthday Shmirthday

Eight days after Canada Day, on July 9, is an even less important holiday: my girlfriend Bronwyn’s birthday. Usually I ignore this insubstantial and meaningless day, but this year Bronwyn selfishly suggested, in her shrill and uneducated voice, that we might “go out for dinner or something,” even though she knew that I probably didn’t want to. Sometimes I don’t know why I even bother with her.

Courageously, in my rich, seductive baritone, I told her that I had more important things to do; influential philosophical tracts to read and complex opera-cycles to consider. I started to explain to her Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, but she began to pout and clearly wasn’t interested. Really, birthdays bring out the selfishness in everyone. Grown adults demanding gifts and attention?! Isn’t that the behaviour of petulant children? I decided to do some research into this strange and unnerving phenomenon.

According to Bunny Party, Rosemary Wells’s harrowing but ultimately apple-juice-smelling children’s book, birthday parties are “fun.” Wells goes on to write that “Max pushed the red button on the Space Cadet’s Ear-Splitter space siren.” Now I was beginning to understand. The “red button,” with its obvious sexual overtones, is what Bronwyn’s need for birthday recognition is really about: she’s sexually unfulfilled!

I knew just what to do: to demonstrate my sexual potency, I generously painted her a painting, painted by me, of a nude adult woman being born in a frothy flurry of milk and Corn Pops. It’s provocative but exceptionally tasteful, and it displays a classical mastery rarely seen in the arts today. It also says everything that I couldn’t find the words to say, despite my positively staggering skills with language. In the end, Bronwyn had to admit that I was right all along, and isn’t that what birthdays are really about?