Legion opposes statutory holiday on Nov. 11
Gravitas of day would be lost, group argues
Spurred by a private member’s bill drafted by Liberal MP Colin Fraser, the House of Commons is convening a committee on whether to update the Holidays Act to make Remembrance Day a “legal” day off.
It would still be up to the provinces to decide, but Fraser sees his proposed amendment as a good first step.
“Personally, I believe that it would be appropriate for Remembrance Day to be a statutory holiday in every province and territory in Canada,” he told the House.
But the measure faces stiff opposition from an organization that has been campaigning against a Remembrance Day holiday for more than 40 years; the Royal Canadian Legion.
“If it was institutionalized and made a statutory holiday, the impression would be that people in their homes would not make the effort to attend a downtown ceremony,” said Bill Maxwell, secretary of the legion’s poppy and remembrance committee.
Few Canadians, for instance, spend Labour Day reflecting on the 19th-century Toronto labour protest it was meant to commemorate. Ditto Victoria Day, which was originally enacted so Canadians could spend the day cheering the birthday of whoever happened to be the reigning monarch.
“For most, (Victoria Day) just provides for a long weekend in May,” legion representative Brad White told a Veterans Affairs committee in 2015. “We must not let Remembrance Day suffer this same fate.”
This is not the first attempt to add Nov. 11 to the holiday calendar.
In 1996, the House of Commons defeated a private member’s bill looking to enshrine Remembrance Day as a holiday in public-service collective agreements. A New Democratic Party bill nearly identical to Fraser’s died last year on the order paper — and a statutory Remembrance Day was even an NDP election promise.
As far back as the late 1970s, the Royal Canadian Legion was advocating against government proposals to turn Remembrance Day into a “floating holiday” for federal employees.
In fact, in the late 1920s, Remembrance Day (then known as Armistice Day) was celebrated on the Monday closest to Nov. 11. It was legion advocacy that helped to fix the commemoration on Nov. 11 proper.
Remembrance Day is already a paid holiday for about half Canada’s 35 million people. Only residents of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have to work that day.
In B.C., for instance, there is no school on Nov. 11, but Remembrance Day assemblies are typically held on the closest school day.
The legion is not the only veterans’ group to bemoan the holidaying of Remembrance Day.
“Our stance is that it should never be a holiday; you take away the uniqueness of being able to educate the younger generation of the horrors of war,” said Rob Larman, a director with the War Amps of Canada.
But Mike Blais, founder of Canadian Veterans Advocacy, supports a nationwide statutory holiday.
“When we have a national holiday where respect is paid on a national level, the spirit of the nation is satisfied,” he told Postmedia in 2014. The legion itself is split. Thirteen times since 1970, legion conventions have featured a resolution to recognize Remembrance Day as a holiday. But each time, most recently in 2012, the “no holiday” camp won the day.
Former Veterans Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole, a veteran, has observed Remembrance Day in a province where it’s a holiday (Nova Scotia) and one where it isn’t (Ontario).
O’Toole said the cenotaph ceremonies in Nova Scotia were “much more crowded … than ones I attended in Ontario,” but they clearly included only a fraction of students who had the day off.
“My personal view is that if kids are not in school … there is a likelihood that a majority of children would not get the same level of education and appreciation for the service and sacrifice the day represents,” he wrote in an email to the National Post.
When Remembrance Day was recognized as Armistice Day in 1921, it was notable for the considerable thoroughness with which life came to a stop for the two minutes’ silence at 11 a.m. All across the then-British Empire, courts paused proceedings, traffic halted, and factories and construction sites fell silent.
Nov. 11 isn’t as dramatic anymore. But the legion believes another day off lacks the gravitas of a nation full of schoolchildren bowing their heads, labourers laying down their tools and office workers standing at their desks.
“Rather than having a day off, commemoration or remembrance should be emphasized at the workplace or in the schools,” said Maxwell.