Date Published:

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Empire Day

Empire Day. This term is now [i. e. in 1948] applied to May 24, the anniversary of Queen Victoria's birthday, and is a day of national celebration to strengthen the attachment of Canadians to the British Empire. Formerly Empire Day was celebrated on the school day immediately preceding May 24. At the instigation of the Hon. George W. Ross, minister of education in Ontario, the Dominion Educational Association in 1898 recommended that, on the school day, departments of education should arrange for such exercises in the schools as would tend to the increase of a sound patriotic feeling. The practice of patriotic exercises by the people as a whole, rather than in the schools alone, has now become established on May 24, to which has been transferred the name of Empire Day.

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 293.