I'm 37 years old, I've lived in Ontario my entire life, and it's only this year that I learned a) August 1 is Emancipation Day, b) Caribana is a celebration of emancipation, and c) John Graves Simcoe, after whom Simcoe Day is named (Civic Holiday technically being called Simcoe Day), was instrumental in abolishing slavery in Canada.
This information has always been available, it just never reached me. In my life some people have been pedantic about calling Civic Holiday "Simcoe Day", but I was like "Yeah, yeah, yeah, another politician from history, whatever", and didn't bother to actually look at his legacy. And with Caribana, I was like "Yeah, yeah, yeah, cultural tradition, whatever", without bothering to look into its origin and meaning because it isn't for or about me. I never even realized that they're related and that the backstory is of interest!
This needs to be made more glaringly obvious. Because the end of slavery is definitely worth celebrating and being celebrated by everyone, and not everyone knows that this is what is being celebrated.
Solution: rather than calling the Civic Holiday "Simcoe Day", we should name it "Emancipation Day". It can either be celebrated in August 1 or on the first Monday of the month - people more knowledgeable of the nuances can make this decision.
But they should put Emancipation Day right out front, printed on our calendars on the day people get off work, so even clueless idiots like me will notice what it's marking!
1 comment:
I thought "Civic Holiday" was an excuse for a long weekend, a la Family Day in February. I also recently learned this about Emancipation.
But I just now -- from this post -- learned this about Caribana. I assumed Caribana was the equivalent of Carnivale, a general celebration of Caribbean culture in the diaspora. I used to live near the location of the festival in NYC. As far as I know, that had no connection to Emancipation. If it did, it was well hidden.
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