Now that British Columbia has added Family Day to its repertoire of public holidays, it is tied with Saskatchewan for the province with the most holidays in Canada.
Before moving here, I had no idea that Saskatchewan was alone at the top of the provinces for holiday time, and while Nunavut also has 10, it's a territory. After a little digging, I found that Saskatchewan may be top dog in the country, but when it comes to the top countries in the world, the province still has a little catching up to do.
Canada's provinces are still behind in stat-holiday time compared to many other countries. China and Egypt both have 16 public holidays. Saskatchewan has 10, five of which are provincial. The province will really need to pull up its socks and do some creative thinking if it wants to get that number up to a more respectable 16.
It can't be that hard to add six holidays. Boxing Day is already unofficially recognized in most parts of province, so that's an easy one to put on the books.
And the province doesn't have to do this all on its own. There has been a movement to make St. Patrick's Day a national holiday for some time. If the feds mandate that day, there's one less the province has to deal with.
That's a versatile holiday too. You can change the name to Green Day, and it will appease the environmental buffs while finding a cause both the Protestants and Catholics can work together on. There might be a band that has that named trademarked already though, so we might have to think on that title some more.
I am honestly shocked there isn't already an officially recognized Roughrider Day, but I'd say it's about time the province gets on that one.
Just three more to go.
Maybe we could institute a throw-back holiday to those people who thought the summer solstice was so important, they moved a bunch of rocks into a formation at Stonehenge (unless you think aliens did that). Summer solstice, spring and fall equinoxes could all use a little recognition. People used to fall all over themselves when these astronomical occurrences appeared. I even awoke one morning and found that a roommate had placed a "Happy Spring Equinox" note on my door. He was clearly psyched about it, so maybe that's something we can all get into.
Spring Equinox would be the best to take the day off though, because both summer and fall are close to other holidays and winter is pretty well covered by Christmas.
Another popular holiday in other parts of the world, and one that actually took me by surprise and left me stranded in a European city one day, is May Day. The first of May is technically Europe's Labour Day, which we already have, but if Saskatchewan just sticks to calling it May Day, then we can get away with celebrating both.
Finally, the province could institute a holiday in June. There is no holiday in that month yet. There are plenty of excuses we can use to get a June day off and match the Chinese and Egyptians on stat holidays. It could be June 16 recognizing Bloomsday, for the James Joyce buffs out there.
I would suggest just making Father's Day a stat, but that wouldn't be fair to all the mothers. We could take off D-Day or do something called J-Day, for the June day we decide to make a mandatory holiday. Whatever it takes to get us on top.
I'm sure you all have some extra holiday ideas too, so I know if we work together we can turn Saskatchewan into the holiday hotspot of the world.
