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Concept
Commonwealth Day
Summary
Commonwealth Day (formerly Empire Day) is the annual celebration of the Commonwealth of Nations, since 1977 often held on the second Monday in March. It is marked by an Anglican service in Westminster Abbey, normally attended by the monarch as Head of the Commonwealth along with the Commonwealth Secretary-General and Commonwealth High Commissioners in London. The monarch delivers a broadcast address to the Commonwealth.
While it has a certain official status, Commonwealth Day is not a public holiday in most Commonwealth countries, and there is little public awareness of it. It is marked as a holiday in Gibraltar, but not in March. In Canada "Victoria Day" is celebrated on the Monday closest to 24 May (Queen Victoria's birthday).
The idea of observing one day in each year as a public holiday throughout the empire was first suggested to the council in 1894 and 1895 by Thomas Robinson, the Royal Colonial Institute's honorary secretary at Winnipeg in Canada. Taking up Robinson's suggestion, the Royal Colonial institute's London council addressed a petition to the Queen in July 1894 declaring that, whereas other nations had annual days for national celebration, the British empire had no such day, and proposing that the Queen's birthday should be set aside for the purpose. In a reply the prime minister, Lord Rosebery, stated that it was a matter not for the government but for the community and pointed out that government departments already kept the Queen's birthday as a holiday. The idea was gaining support in Canada, however, and on the initiative of Clementina Trenholme in 1898, who introduced an Empire Day to Ontario schools, on the last school day before 24 May, Queen Victoria's birthday. The idea of a day that would "remind children that they formed part of the British Empire" was conceived in 1897. Empire Day or Victoria Day was celebrated in the Cape Colony before the Second Boer War and thereafter throughout the Union of South Africa.
Official source
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