Today we honor the holiday formally known as Dominion Day, celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Canada. Before 1867, Britain had assumed control of most of the land of Canada through various treaties, even if there were still pockets of French loyalist scattered throughout the land (mostly in New Brunswick, which is the only constitutionally bilingual province). In 1867, The Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick merged and formed a confederation called the Dominion of Canada, with 4 provinces (The Province of Canada split into two separate provinces, Quebec and Ontario, joining New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) and its own government (even if the British parliament kept some sort of political control until 1982).
Because of this limited control, many Canadians believed themselves to still be British and they did not truly celebrate this change in status until 1917, when they celebrated the golden anniversary, 50 years of their own government of the change.
In 1946, a bill was introduced to change the name from Dominion Day to Canada Day, however this was not formally accomplished until 1982, and even then with some protest.
By the 1980′s, most of Canada had some sort of local celebration. There are concerts, parades, festivals, and often fireworks. The Queen of England has appeared several times on this national holiday, as she did this year. So in honor of the birthday of Canada, today’s list is made of a few of the songs that refer to Canada in some mostly positively, way (purposely leaving out South Parks, Blame Canada and Canadian Idiot by Weird Al).
- Canadian Please - Julia Bentley & Andrew Gunadie – An Absolute MUST-SEE video
- Oh Canada/Welcome to the Maritimes - Classified
- Great White North – Bob and Doug McKenzie
- Canadian Railroad Trilogy/Alberta Bound - Gordon Lightfoot (or Alberta Bound)
- Dire Wolf - Tragically Hip
- Lakeside Park/Spirit of Radio – Rush
- Helpless - Neil Young
- Life is a Highway - Tom Cochran
- Canadian Dream – Sam Roberts
- Crabbuckit /Flypaper – K-os
For an impressive collection of Canadian songs, check out this list.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 5:22 am and is filed under Holiday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
