Muskoka was busy, prosperous, filled with energy, a happening place. Locals worked dawn to dusk all summer to meet visitors’ needs, able, for a change, to earn a full livelihood.
Municipal councillors, school board trustees, and members of local boards of trade – all local folk directly connected with those they represented – were delighted that more city people could come North because of the August “long weekend.” But city folk expect to be looked after when they get to the hinterland, and Muskokans happily pushed themselves to meet expectations. That demand-and-supply was, every Muskokan understood, the core of our vacation economy. What Torontonian would want to see a CLOSED FOR CIVIC HOLIDAY sign; what Muskokan would want, despite being exhausted, to discourage visitors in summer when all winter would be quiet?
Muskoka’s well-governed municipalities simply delayed Civic Holiday several weeks past Labour Day. Locals all happily worked the first Monday in August, knowing a break awaited n the fall when visitors had dramatically thinned out. That was the first joy. The second was that kids, who did not need a holiday in August when school was already “out” for the summer, got an extra one when school was “back in.” The third joy was that city kids, who generally lorded over local boys and girls because they were patently superior, did not get this extra holiday that Muskoka roughs did – a notional rebalancing of the superiority index.
The civic holiday is the most malleable in our country. It began, naturally enough, in Toronto, where councillors closed down their city on the first Monday of August in 1869 for a “day of recreation.” It only took a century to realize better marketing was in order, so in 1969 Toronto councillors renamed their generic “recreation” holiday “Simcoe Day,” emphasizing how the province’s first lieutenant-governor had led the charge to abolish slavery. That worthy cause is not, however, what John Graves Simcoe is also remembered for elsewhere across our province where more Indigenous people live.
“Civic Holiday” is not a statutory holiday in Ontario and thus presents an open opportunity for municipalities to celebrate their founders. In addition to Toronto’s being now called Simcoe Day, Ottawa’s is Colonel By Day; Hamilton’s, George Hamilton Day; and Burlington’s, Joseph Brant Day. McLaughlin Day is celebrated in Oshawa, Alexander Mackenzie Day in Sarnia, and James Cockburn Day in Cobourg. Over in Peterborough, they honour Peter Robinson on August’s first Monday, while in Guelph they celebrate John Galt.
It will be one fine day when district councillors give us Chief Musquakie Day, in response to the “calls to action” for Truth and Reconciliation, and in contemporary tribute to the great Ojibwe leader for whom our District has long been named.
