Simcoe Day

[bcholmes]

A bunch of us from work were in the pub on Friday night, and one guy was talking about what this long weekend was all about. It's commonly called the "civic holiday", but some people refer to it as Simcoe Day. "Does anyone even remember Simcoe?" my co-worker complained. "What did he ever do?"

So I spoke up: "I'm pretty sure it was Simcoe who was responsible for abolishing slavery in Upper Canada, making it the first colony in the Commonwealth to do so."

"Oh... uh... you may be right," my cow-orker said.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

As I recall, Ontario went for a phase out of slavery, thanks to Simcoe, part of which involved manditory manumission of slaves who entered Upper Canada.

Over in Lower Canada, Osgoode presided over legislation that left slavery legal, as I recall, but removed all legal mechanisms for enforcing it. You could buy slaves but you couldn't make them stay and if they ran away, no officer of the law would help you bring them back. Also, if they made it to Upper Canada, they were free as soon as they hit the border...

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I'd never even heard it called Simcoe Day until I moved to Toronto. It was always 'the Civic Holiday'.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Named after the Honda Civic, which saved Canada from lousy gas milage.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

When do we get a SmartCar holiday?

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

Err wait, Prius holiday, in this blog. XD

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Oooo. Prius Day. I could get behind that!

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I think you just re-earned your canadianism, even with your feelings about hockey.