Queen Victoria’s day is long gone
by Robert LaFrance
When I was a young gaffer, the holiday weekend just past revolved around Victoria Day (or, more important, my second mother Minnie Paris’s birthday) but the main thing was that we students got the long weekend off so that we could read philosophy and recharge our batteries – maybe go fishing.
Nowadays it’s not so often called Victoria Day, except by people of a certain age. I told a grade ten student that he had a long weekend coming up, Victoria Day, and he said: “Is there a Carleton Day, or a Westmorland Day? How come we have a holiday just to honour one county?” Needless to say, he was joking. He knew that the day was named for that city on Vancouver Island.
In French, Victoria Day is called Fête de la Reine, which means it has now moved from being a celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday to being a celebration of the reigning monarch’s birthday. No matter what that monarch’s birthday is, the holiday is always May 24, or whatever Monday falls conveniently close to May 24, old Queen Vic’s birthday.
In Quebec, of course, it’s something different. It’s National Patriots’ Day. In that province the word ‘national’ means ‘in Quebec’, and the word ‘patriot’ does not necessarily mean patriotic to Canada.
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Since attaining (against all odds) my 63rd birthday on May 11, I have received many congratulations and cash-filled letters and I suppose it’s now time to tell everyone to desist. It’s become a bit of an embarrassment. I bought a new Rolls Royce and some steak, although I’m not sure I can afford to eat steak.
“How did I get here?” I have been asking myself. It was only about two years ago (1967) that I was working on a beer truck on Vancouver Island, delivering Lucky Lager and similar brews from Campbell River to Gold River, and only a few minutes after that when I looked into the face of my first darling daughter, who just turned 26. What? There must be some mistake.
In 1970 I motored down to Columbus, Indiana (almost to Tennessee) with a bunch of guys from Montreal and that was only about ten years ago. I saw one of the guys last month and he looks OLD. In 1982, after she begged and pleaded for months, I consented to marry my lovely bride who now says it’s been almost 29 years since that fateful date in September. And how I have suffered!
“You wake up and you’re seventy-five and you wonder how you got there.” – British poet Stephen Spender. That’s about the size of it.
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To his shock and that of his wife, my friend Elbert J. Finnegan was elected to the House of Commons in the recent national frenzy we called an election. He ran for the NDP in an Ontario riding where his party had received 198 votes in the previous federal election and now he’s getting fat in the subsidized parliamentary restaurant. Filet mignon at $3.45 and Baked Alaska for the price of a
crosstown bus ticket. “Gastronomic opulence breeds corpulence,” I once wrote.
The late comedian Victor Buono said it best in this short poem:
"I think that I shall never see
My feet."
"Is there a diet that will make me lose forty pounds in a week and still feel great?" Elbert panted as he ‘jogged’ by one day, on his way to the club and some lemonade.
"Stop having those intimate dinners for two unless there's someone else present," I suggested.
"I just need to lose enough so my belly isn't out to here," he gesticulated vaguely in front of him with his third bottle of lemonade. He rolled away, and then I started thinking about all the people I knew who had weight problems. I'm big boned, so there wouldn't be any point in my cutting down on calories, but many others need only push themselves away from the table and go for a walk now and then. Losing weight is easy; I've done it a hundred times, but there’s no need of denying it, I may be in the same (sinking) boat as Elbert, which means I will soon have to ‘hit the road’ again.
Now where did I put those jogging shoes? I just had them in 1977.
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