Happy 200th birthday to Queen Victoria!

That's what we're celebrating this weekend, and why thanks to a two centuries old Queen of England, we get to go camping in the snow each May.

Victoria Day is a holiday in all of Canada and parts of Scotland, but nowhere else in the world.

The Canadian Parliament declared Victoria's birthday, May 24, 1819, a holiday in 1845, but it became known as "Victoria Day" after she died in 1901.

The holiday used to fall on her actual birthday, but in 1952 Parliament made the decision to have the holiday on either May 24th or the Monday prior to it every year.

In the end it's all to celebrate the woman deemed "The Mother of Confederation" who signed into effect the British North America act, essentially making Canada a country.

She also picked Ottawa to be the capital, mainly because it was tough to attack by the Americans and because it was on the border between English and French Canada.

 

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