Happy Simcoe Day! Happy Canada Day! (Or Canada has tons of holidays.)

Monday was a Civic Holiday. It is a lovely, bureaucratic name for a day off, no?  It is the first Monday in August.

Looking a little deeper into my trusty source, Wikipedia, in Toronto the Civic Holiday is actually called Simcoe day.  It celebrates John Graves Simcoe, who was the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) and abolished slavery in U.C. in 1793, ending the practice by 1810.  He also moved the capital to Toronto, and designed Yonge and Dundas streets.

Before that, he fought for the British in the Revolutionary War, and almost killed George Washington.

We have a lot of holidays in Canada.  (Not that J enjoys them - he worked through most of Monday.)  I counted 12, including: Family Day, Good Friday, Boxing Day, Victoria Day and Easter Monday. The weirdest thing for being such a tolerant country is all of the religious holidays off.  But 77% of Canadians identify with some Christian religion (77%?), so I guess that it makes sense.

A weird thing about holidays is what closes and what is open. For example, most malls are closed on Family Day, in February. What?! What else are you supposed to do with your family in February but shop? Grocery stores are also mainly closed, so you have to be prepared with adequate supplies of food.  But it isn't consistent, and depends on the holiday.

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Which brings me to Canada Day, which was last month. It is like Fourth of July, but in Canada. Actually, it just celebrates the confederation of Canada, not any sort of Independence from Britain, since they are still pretty connected, having the same Queen and all. However, they do fireworks, and picnics, and are as patriotic as Canadians get. Which is... not very.  Our neighbors told us that we were "very American" for putting Canadian flags in our front lawn.  And we went to an AWESOME neighborhood BBQ organized by one of our neighbors.

This is how you get ready for Canada Day. First, you get your kids excited by watching Are We There Yet, World Adventure, Canada Day.

Then, you need to purchase some Canadian festive attire. Fortunately, Old Navy is in Canada for just such needs.  And Canadian Dollar.  We were the only family (ahem, neighbors!) who were completely decked out. (We did actually buy and wear the cowboy hats on the right.)

Then, you walk down the street with your goodies to your park, which your neighbors have thoughtfully decorated and organized. There are a few grills, serving hamburgers and hot dogs, donated side dishes and desserts, crafts for the kids (so they can decorate their bikes in maple leaves, of course!) and alcohol on someone's property, because we are a rule-abiding bunch.  There is also an amazing cake someone made!

Last, but not least, it is important that you have some hippy-trippy friends in your Canadian neighborhood to organize your drum circle.

We did not stay for fireworks, but I hear they were pretty great.  We plan to do something similar around Labour Day, I think, right, NL? 

We have a truly great neighborhood with really fabulous people, and I am grateful every day that we moved to such a super street. One of J's colleagues (nvdb), who has moved all over the world, was in Toronto when we were house hunting and gave us the best advice when we came back discouraged one night.  He said to find the neighborhood where you will be happy, even if you have to wait for it and go into temporary housing. While that didn't happen, we are happy and relieved to have ended up where we did, on a street with fun families, lots of cool kids and a great park. Thanks for welcoming us!