Celebrating Heritage Day in Canada
Heritage Day, which falls on the third Monday in February, is an annual event to celebrate the importance of heritage to communities and to our country. Since at least 1973, there were calls to make this day a national holiday. Many communities also celebrate heritage week and heritage month in February.
Efforts around Heritage Day began shortly after the creation of the Heritage Canada Foundation (HCF) – now known as the National Trust for Canada – in March 1973. In December of that year, the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs presented a report to the House of Commons recommending that a national holiday named Heritage Day be established on the third Monday of February and that a joint Senate-Commons committee be tasked with choosing its theme each year. Although support for the report was unanimous, no government action was taken.
HCF then took the initiative to invite municipalities to proclaim February 14, 1974 as Heritage Day, and Ottawa, Charlottetown, and Fredericton signed on. Adoption of the day grew rapidly in subsequent years. As a Winter 1975 article in HCF’s Heritage magazine noted: “Holidays… are an extremely useful method of focussing attention upon something we consider worthwhile. Holidays mythologize. They formalize. They enshrine. They provide a rallying point. A beacon… And we think that day should be celebrated during the school year so tomorrow’s generation can more usefully and readily celebrate the tangible reminders of the many generations which went before them.”
For many years, the National Trust chose a theme for Heritage Day, leaving the theme intentionally broad to allow easy use by groups across Canada. In 2001 the theme was “Travel through time” (which was about cars, trains and boats, rather than time traveling), while in 2015 all were encouraged to “Have Fun with Heritage”. While the poster that year featured short-sleeved revelers on a historic carousel, the options for outdoor fun in frosty February have to be questioned. Other themes have included military heritage, heritage of faith, and the heritage of the everyday.
The National Trust discontinued providing a theme for Heritage Day in about 2015. In recent years, more effort has been put on encouraging people to visit heritage sites during the month of July, when there is a considerably lower risk of frostbite.
In many places, a February celebration of heritage is thriving. The Ontario government designated the third week in February as Ontario Heritage Week back in 1985 and the party continues. Amongst other events, a celebration will take place at Ottawa City Hall at noon on February 18th, 2025.
While the federal government never adopted the third Monday in February as a holiday, giving a curt wave to heritage by naming February 15 as National Flag Day, many provinces have. These include Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, where it is a statutory holiday known as Family Day. Many jurisdictions have also adopted the first Monday in August as a civic or provincial day, such as Saskatchewan Day or British Columbia Day which “celebrates the history, heritage and culture of British Columbia” and Nova Scotia where that day is known as Natal Day and celebrates the founding of the province. Here in Ottawa, we mark that day as Colonel By Day, in honour of the man who masterminded the building of the Rideau Canal (thereby foreshadowing Ottawa’s importance as a hotbed of technical innovation).
