Here’s a bit of a repeat from a couple of years ago, mainly because I don’t have the time or creativity to come up with something different about the late great Queen on her big day in the Dominion.
Today is Victoria Day, which in Canada means that this is the long weekend known as the gateway to the summer, much like Memorial Day in the US. Also like Memorial Day in the US, the reason behind the long weekend has been pretty much forgotten. Not only is the occasion now known mostly as “the May long weekend” but many folks at least in Alberta, apparently too tired from making all that oil money, have taken to referring is as “The May long,” which makes me shudder.
Victoria’s birthday was in fact 24 May 1819, but Canada appropriates the penultimate Monday in order to make a three-day holiday. We Albertans owe her much, not least our province’s name, after her daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, herself named after Victoria’s beloved Albert. And then there’s a little lake named after Louise, too.
Just as I wrote two years ago, while most of our family and friends have run off to their cabins at the lake, or their rattletrap tin-can campers near someone else’s cabin at the lake, we’ve stayed put to enjoy the creature comforts of a well-stocked pantry (I tried a new recipe for rhubarb cake and it turned out well — will post the recipe shortly) and fridge and our own beds.
We’ve been busy fixing fences, moving cattle around, seeding our wheat, gardening. And Saturday we went to the annual reopening for the season of our little heritage museum. Today’s weather is sunny, warm, and calm, much like Saturday’s, a relief from all of yesterday’s wind.
There’s a big week ahead of us, with all the usual activities (swim club, a final meeting for 4H achievement day weekend in two weeks) before we leave Thursday to the big city for a few days for Laura’s performances in the provincial performing arts festival. So blogging should be light for the next week or so, and there won’t be any Poetry Friday post this week because I’ll be away.
Filed under: Canadiana, Commemorations, Family, Farm Life, Spring
And you forgot that since it is also traditionally called the 24th of May long weekend, and beer comes in cases of 24, it has become 2-4 weekend for many. More shuddering, I suspect.
Have a great weekend. Looking forward to the rhubarb cake recipe as we can never have enough things to do with all that rhubarb.
How about a cheer or two for Louise Caroline Alberta’s husband, the marquess of Lorne, the very successful governor-general of Canada whose name has been bestowed on countless Canadian boys these hundred years and more. If he’s a Lorne, he must be a Canadian.
JoVE, I forgot about that beer business, probably because I don’t buy beer by the case lol.
OC, hip hip hooray! No Lornes around here under the age of 50 though.