Victoria
Day
May 20, 2002
"The
24th of May is the Queen's Birthday, If we don't get a holiday,
we'll all run away." Yaffles
& Yaffles
A
Brief History.
Victoria Day is the day we celebrate the birthday of Queen
Victoria (b. 1819 d.1901) and has been celebrated in Canada
since the reign of Queen Victoria which lasted from 1837-1901.
In 1854, May 24 was declared a holiday by the Legislature
of the Province of Canada and upon her death in 1901 the Parliament
of Canada passed an act establishing the legal holiday as
Victoria Day.
From
the time of Confederation on, Victoria's birthday was celebrated
on May 24 unless it fell on a Sunday, in which case it was
celebrated on May 25. In 1952 and amendment to the Statutes
of Canada set the celebration of Victoria Day for the Monday
preceding May 25.
Kensington
Place, where Queen Victoria was born, was also the residence
of Lady Diana before she died.
Sources:
Canadian
Heritage Site: Victoria Day
KidsturnCentral
Victoria Day
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A
Teenager Becomes Queen: She was
only 18 years old when she was awakened one morning and told
that her Uncle had died. Since her uncle was King William
IV, and she was the next in line for the throne, this meant
she was now Queen of England. Like any good teenager, she
wrote about the experience in her diary:
Tuesday,
20th June 1837 I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told
me that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham
were here, and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went
into my sitting-room (only in my dressing-gown) and alone,
and saw them Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain) then
acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more,
and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently
that I am Queen. Lord Conyngham knelt down and kissed my
hand, at the same time delivering to me the official announcement
of the poor King's demise.
You can
read the rest of her entry at Eye
Witness: History through the eyes of those who lived it.
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Victoria
on Mothers and Women: Victoriana.com
has a number of blunt and quiet unladylike things Queen Victoria
wrote on the two subjects everyone thinks she loved. "An
ugly baby is a very nasty object -- and the prettiest is frightful
when undressed.." But wait, there's more...
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Victoria,
Dr. Snow & Ether: The story of Dr. John Snow and his
journey from a York end labourer's son to obstetrician for the
Queen on two occasions is pretty remarkable. Essentially, however,
it has to do with anesthesia. The story is told at the UCLA
Department of Epidemiology's site. Return
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Victorian
Notables:
Although seen as an age of repression and conservatism (and
not without reason), the Victorian age was equally a second
Renaissance of thought, poetry and philosophy. Social reforms,
religious reforms and scientific reforms all took place at
a remarkable rate. Here is a list of just some of the movers
and shakers of the time:
John
Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873): The founder of Utilitarianism
and one of the greatest of the Victorian liberal thinkers.
William
Morris (1834 - 1896): Artist, decorator, writer, lecturer,
socialist.
Charles
Dickens (1812 - 1870): Author and social reformer.
Benjamin
Disraeli (1804 - 1881): British Prime Minister, writer
and one of Sherlock Holmes' heroes
Elizabeth
Barrett Moulton-Barrett (Browning) (1806 - 1861): Poet,
almost Poet Laureate (it went to Tennyson) and love of Robert
Browning.
Charles
Darwin (1809 - 1882): The man who would get John
Scopes in so much trouble in 1925.
Florence
Nightingale (1820 - 1910): Best known for her work as
a nurse, Florence Nightingale also developed new techniques
of statistical analysis which, during the Crimean War, she
used to plot the number of preventable deaths in the military
and developed the polar-area
diagram to show the needless deaths caused by unsanitary
conditions.
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Assassination
Attempts:
It seems that not every one of her subjects loved the Queen
in the same way. Some loved her in the sense that they would
die for her, while others loved her in the sense that they
wanted her dead. There were eight attempts on her life. Yvonne's
Royalty site has an excellent account of them which you
can read about here.
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