Victoria Day celebrations

Victoria Day weekend is drawing to a close. Niagara Falls, Milton and Toronto are hosting fireworks displays — and many families around the Golden Horseshoe are outside enjoying the last few hours of the holiday.

When you think of a long weekend, you think about people out enjoying the water or eating outside. And a few families setting off their own fireworks in the evening. But earlier today, some more traditional Victoria Day celebrations took place in our area.

Pauline Grondin is portraying Queen Victoria: “It’s my birthday on May 24th.”

Flash back to 1865 when Queen Victoria was in the middle of her reign. Visitors to Westfield Heritage Village in Rockton got to meet the birthday girl in period style.

Pauline said: “Queen Victoria was probably the best, one of the best known monarchs of all time and the Victorian Era was so important to Canada’s history.”

A volunteer-sewn replica of the Queen’s wedding dress was on display at the tailor shop. She was married in 1840, just two years after she took the throne.

Lloyd Bailey is portraying the ‘Tailor’: It was something like 12-hundred hours of work just to make the lace for this dress, costing a thousand pounds at that time.”

The general store was a sweet throwback to a simpler time when Victoria Day was always celebrated on the Queen’s exact birthday, May 24th.

In Oakville at Bronte Creek’s Spruce Lane Farmhouse, families celebrated the holiday as they would have in the early 1900’s, shortly after the Queen’s death.

Cathy Entwistle is a guide at the Farmhouse: “Lots of picnics, lots of games being played outside.”

Farming families played games and feasted to celebrate not just Victoria Day, but the birth of a new season.

Cathy said: “You’re really rejoicing that you managed to last through the winter and that the time of plenty is coming around again.”

For a lot of us, the Victoria Day weekend is still a symbol of the start of summer. Lots of people open up their cottages or get started on their gardens. Today’s weather certainly felt like a nice change of pace after months of cold winter, so maybe our Victoria Day celebrations haven’t changed so much after all.