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rfmcdonaldThe first Monday in August is called, unimaginatively by the Ontario provincial government, the August Civil Holiday. The CBC points out that it has a more content-specific name in some of the province's more notable communities.
John Graves Simcoe was, as the CBC points out, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada later Ontario and the founder of York then Toronto, and seems to have been a reasonably progressive man all around for a man of his time. He certainly is a local man: I hadn't heard anything of him at all apart from textbook passages before I moved here. Even when I got here I experienced Ontario not as another Canadian province with its own distinct patterns of life but as ur-Canada: the language was the same standard Canadian English that I heard on the CBC, the streets and buildings were the same ones that I'd seen on national television or read about in national classics or glossy news magazines, Ontario's celebrities were--if they were big enough--Canada's celebrities, and so on. I honestly don't know what it means to be an Ontarian, or what Ontarian culture consists of, other than to suggest that it might be something more of the rural areas and communities smaller than Toronto (and Ottawa)? I'm sorry.
At any rate, the question of Ontarianness may--as Murray Campbell wrote in The Globe and Mail this past Saturday--become more charged, as Ontario's traditionally very strong identification with Canada as a whole and a strong alliance between provincial and federal governments that began after the Second World War is starting to fail, not least because of the simultaneity of Premier Dalton McGuinty's long-standing campaign against unfair federal income transfers from richer provinces to poorer ones and the publicized predictions (PDF format) that Ontario will very soon be a "have-not" province in Canada owing to lagging economic growth and rising interprovincial transfer payments.
I'm tempted to be trite and wonder if, in the case of Ontario changes in the economy may, in fact, determine the culture to come.
Banks, post offices and libraries across Ontario are closed Monday as the province celebrates the August Civic Holiday, known in Toronto as Simcoe Day and Ottawa as Colonel By Day.
In 1793, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, ordered the gradual abolition of slavery long before the British Empire banned the trade in 1834.
Simcoe is also credited with introducing many facets of English law into Upper Canada, including trial by jury and with beginning the construction of Yonge Street, Toronto's main north-south thoroughfare.
Toronto city council first declared the name of the holiday to be Simcoe Day in 1869 and other municipalities followed suit by declaring holidays of their own.
In Ottawa, the man who oversaw construction of the Rideau Canal, Lt.-Col. John By, is celebrated on the first Monday in August. The canal was opened in 1832.
There have been several attempts to convince the Ontario government to change the name of Civic Holiday to Simcoe Day but none have succeeded. Several other provincial municipalities have declared their own names for the statutory day off.
John Graves Simcoe was, as the CBC points out, the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada later Ontario and the founder of York then Toronto, and seems to have been a reasonably progressive man all around for a man of his time. He certainly is a local man: I hadn't heard anything of him at all apart from textbook passages before I moved here. Even when I got here I experienced Ontario not as another Canadian province with its own distinct patterns of life but as ur-Canada: the language was the same standard Canadian English that I heard on the CBC, the streets and buildings were the same ones that I'd seen on national television or read about in national classics or glossy news magazines, Ontario's celebrities were--if they were big enough--Canada's celebrities, and so on. I honestly don't know what it means to be an Ontarian, or what Ontarian culture consists of, other than to suggest that it might be something more of the rural areas and communities smaller than Toronto (and Ottawa)? I'm sorry.
At any rate, the question of Ontarianness may--as Murray Campbell wrote in The Globe and Mail this past Saturday--become more charged, as Ontario's traditionally very strong identification with Canada as a whole and a strong alliance between provincial and federal governments that began after the Second World War is starting to fail, not least because of the simultaneity of Premier Dalton McGuinty's long-standing campaign against unfair federal income transfers from richer provinces to poorer ones and the publicized predictions (PDF format) that Ontario will very soon be a "have-not" province in Canada owing to lagging economic growth and rising interprovincial transfer payments.
[W]ill 13 million Ontarians find a will to act collectively and heed their Premier's call to arms?
Mr. White concedes only that the province "is gradually recovering some sense of a regional identity it lost after the Second World War." Mr. Courchene, too, is careful about predicting the future. "They're thinking of themselves as meriting better treatment from the federal government," he said. "Does that make them a region? I don't know."
Certainly not in the way that Quebec is distinctive or the West feels it has been victimized by Bay Street and the NEP. It is also hard to define Ontario: The northwest feels closer to Manitoba and there is little identification with Toronto in the eastern part of the province. In addition, immigrants--and Ontario has been getting 125,000 or more a year--have only to look at their new passports to discern their allegiance.
But circumstances may yet push Ontario into regional belligerence as the belief grows that the equalization program is unsustainable. Its taxpayers contribute 40 per cent of the cost of the scheme--$13.6-billion now, and growing by leaps and bounds--and this burden rises every year whether its economy grows or not. Conversely, while Alberta's oil revenues are part of the equation that determines payouts, the revenues themselves are off limits to the federal treasury. Mr. Courchene calculates that, partly as a result of this scheme, Ontario's per-capita revenues trail every other province.
The prediction that Ontario will soon become a have-not province and qualify for payments that, absurdly, are largely funded by its own taxpayers casts a harsh light on the scheme's shortcomings. Mr. Courchene calls this prospect "fiscalamity," and if Ontarians catch his drift Mr. McGuinty will have a blank cheque to throw some weight around. The eldest child may decide he's fed up with setting a good example and looking after the other kids.
I'm tempted to be trite and wonder if, in the case of Ontario changes in the economy may, in fact, determine the culture to come.
