EDITORIAL: Let’s make Remembrance Day a national holiday
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If you’re reading this right now, it means you’re reading the Ottawa or Toronto Sun. That means it’s a regular work or school day for you.
It shouldn’t be.
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If you lived in Calgary, Edmonton or Winnipeg, you wouldn’t be reading this because the Sun isn’t publishing there today. Remembrance Day is a day off in Alberta and Manitoba.
Also in B.C., Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and P.E.I. Even Canada’s three territories honour Remembrance Day as a statutory holiday. Businesses are closed there and everyone gets a holiday.
As it should be in Ontario.
You should have the day off and be given the opportunity and proper time to remember those who served and why they served.
Ontario is one of just four provinces that don’t observe Remembrance Day as a holiday. Let’s change that. Let’s make it a national holiday.
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This idea has been discussed before, and good arguments have cropped up on both sides.
The biggest worry of those who oppose this revision is that it will cheapen the occasion – that adults will use it as just another vacation day and kids will simply celebrate it as an opportunity to miss a day of school.
It’s a reasonable concern. But that isn’t what happens in the provinces that do observe it. By and large, everyone knows why they have the day off and therefore conduct themselves with the solemnity the day requires.
While not everyone will go to a ceremony with their families, they should be encouraged to attend. Schools should still have their own ceremonies in their auditoriums and classrooms but do it on the last school day before Remembrance Day. As they do quite successfully in most of the country.
There is also something to be said about the fact there is no formal holiday in Canada in the two-month time span between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Let’s break that stretch up a bit.
Life shouldn’t always be about work. It’s important to take a pause from our busy lives – in this case one to honour our veterans. Many of our new veterans have second careers. I’m sure they’d appreciate the day off to visit a cenotaph, too.
Some people may forget to pause and remember. But, no one will forget why they have the day off.
Lest We Forget.
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