This weekend marks the official beginning of the summer tourist season here in Birch Bay. During the winter, our town is a sleepy little hamlet with only a few businesses and services. Many of the restaurants have shortened hours. The C Shop, a candy store where they make most of their own candy and sell popcorn, shaved ice, ice cream and a variety of other treats, is closed during the winter months. The locals get used to walking and biking in the middle of the streets. Our town is a golf cart zone, so we are used to folks driving around in golf carts often going only 10 of 15 mph. We get used to having the beach to ourselves and knowing that many of the houses and cottages are unoccupied during the off season.

But this weekend everything changes. Many tourist areas in the United States won’t officially kick off their season until Memorial Day next weekend, but we always start a week early because it is a big public holiday weekend in Victoria with nearly everyone having a three day weekend. There will be parades and fireworks on the Island and in Vancouver and plenty of folks have reserved time shares and vacation rentals in Birch Bay for the weekend. By tonight the majority of the cars on Birch Bay Drive will be sporting British Columbia license plates.

Victoria Day is a Public Holiday in seven of the Canadian provinces and all three territories. Only Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec do not observe Victoria Day as a Public Holiday. As you might imagine, British Columbia, the capitol of which is Victoria, is a place where Victoria Day is observed with enthusiasm and rigor.

In the United States we have President’s Day, which is a combination of two former holidays: Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12 and Washington’s Birthday on February 22. Those holidays, however, were instituted after the deaths of the two presidents and were not recognized holidays during their lifetimes. Things are a bit different in the United Kingdom. In general, with the exception of Victoria Day, which is unique and not recognized throughout the kingdom, the queen or king’s birthday is officially recognized during their lifetime but not after their death. For example the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II was officially celebrated from the time of her ascension to the throne in 1952 until her death in 2022. Interestingly, her official birthday was not on the day of her birth, April 21, but rather on the second Saturday in June each year. She was not the first monarch to have a private birthday and an official birthday. The tradition was started by King George in 1748. With a November birthday being too cold for a celebratory parade, he tied his annual celebrations with the annual Trooping the Color military parade. While a parade could certainly have been held in April on the Queen’s birthday, Elizabeth chose to continue the tradition and have the official celebration of her birthday on trooping day.

The celebration is quite a spectacle. Over 1400 parading soldiers, 400 horses and 400 musicians take part in the Trooping the Color parade. The monarch arrives at the House Guard’s Parade in Whitehall, receives a royal salute, and inspects the troops. Military bands perform, and the regimental color is taken on procession down the ranks of soldiers. The royal carriage then journeys back to Buckingham Palace at the head of a parade. The Birthday Habits list is also released on that day.

While the events of Trooping the Color are reserved for England, Canadians have been observing Victoria Day for a long time. During the reign of Queen Victoria, May 24, the queen’s birthday , was declared a holiday in Canada. After Victoria’s death in 1901, an act of the Canadian Parliament established Victoria Day as a legal holiday to be celebrated on May 24 (or May 25 when May 24 fell on a Sunday). Now Victoria Day falls on the Monday between the 18th and 24th (inclusive) and, so, is always the penultimate Monday of May).

In the United States, Memorial Day was observed on May 30th, the date General Logan had selected for the first Decoration Day. But in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in may in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees.

Susan reported to me that Mrs. Pfeiffer, her 5th Grade teacher, was Canadian and she learned that Victoria Day was May 24. Furthermore her teacher told the class that when she was a little girl Victoria Day was the first day that she was allowed to go barefoot outside. That gave me pause for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are some places in Canada some years when going barefoot on May 24 would mean walking in the snow barefoot. I’ve done it, but only for short distances, usually followed by dipping my feet into a warm pool of hot spring water. Secondly, had I know that when I was in elementary school, I would have deemed it to be a grave injustice because in our house, we were not allowed to go barefoot outside until Memorial Day. Memorial Day always being after Victoria Day, I would have been unable to understand why Canadians got to go barefoot before we did.

These days I rarely go barefoot outdoors. A couple of surgeries to remove squamous cell carcinoma combined with semi-annual visits to the dermatologist to have numerous precancerous cells frozen to induce me to cover up most of my skin when venturing outdoors. While I still swim barefoot, I do wear a swim top with long sleeves and am careful to slather on additional sunscreen. Most of the rest of the time I cover up my skin, including my feet. I have a very comfortable pair of plastic clogs that are easy to don that I keep near the patio door for quick excursions to the barbecue or to tend plants in the yard. And I own more than my fair share of shoes for other occasions.

So summer arrives today. We plan to mark the occasion with a day trip to Canada. One of the challenges that we have accepted is to go someplace new at least once a year. There are plenty of destinations that are close to our home just across the border for us to explore for years to come. We understand that we’ll have to wait a few minutes longer in line at the border crossing when reentering the US because many Canadians will be celebrating by coming to the US and the crossings will be busy, but we travel at a leisurely pace these days and a few minutes will not cause us stress.

Happy Victoria Day to our neighbors and happy start of summer to the rest of our friends who live north of the equator. I’ve heard that autumn is a lovely season in the southern half of the globe.