Cheers, it’s Canada Day!
An eight-storey iceberg expels air bubbles trapped for thousands of years—what does it smell like? How do Inuit harvest muskox “cashmere” in the Northwest Territories? Why are Quebec femmes so chic? We want to tell the world about the real Canada. Our Canada. It’s vibrant, colourful and filled with progressive people. And now we’re turning 140. Looking pretty good for our age, eh?
We’re bringing Canada to the heart of London this Canada Day. We’re rolling out the maple leaf carpet.
When?
Starts midday Friday, June 29 (July 1 is Canada Day) and continues through the afternoon with free music entertainment on stage from 16:30 to 22:00
Where?
Trafalgar Square, London, UK
Why?
It’s all about saying “bye-bye” to the bland and hello to the riveting details of place, taste, sound and scent. Because that’s what makes our country exotic, proudly original, uniquely ours. If you didn’t know us, now you will. C’est le Canada. We are more.
Who will be there?
Canadian Olympic athletes, a Dene street hockey team, First Nations dancers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, award-winning musicians Sam Roberts Band from Montréal, QC and country rock artist Johnny Reid of Toronto, ON, 18-year-old singer/songwriter Justin Nozuka, Somalian-born Toronto hip hop crossover artist K’Naan, Indie bands The Midway State and Land of Talk and the on stage music show will be rounded off with the singing of ‘Oh Canada’, sung by Alexandria Beck.
A bit about Canada Day
July 1 is a proud day for Canadians. It marks the 1867 formation of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name Canada. The title ‘Canada Day’ was coined in 1982, replacing the former ‘Dominion Day’. The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879. Since 1958, the Government of Canada has set in play an annual observance of Canada’s national day. Each year, thousands gather on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill for spectacular concerts and fireworks, celebrating a heritage as diverse as Canada’s landscape and a nation historically defined by multiculturalism, integration, tolerance, democratic values and a high quality of life.
Carrying the flag for Canada
The Sahtu Dene First Nation players will have travelled more than 4,000 miles from their hometown Déline, 100 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The team not only carries the flag for Canada, but represents a community that has firmly stamped its mark in the history books as the birthplace of ice hockey, now the nation’s most popular official sport. Latest historical evidence shows British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer, Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, and men under his command skated and played the first recorded game of an early version of hockey on a small lake beside Great Bear Lake on October 25, 1825. This predates the earliest previously recorded playing of a ball and stick game on skates by almost thirty years. Déline (known as Fort Franklin until 1993, when the Sahtu Dene and Métis Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement was signed) is the only community located on the shores of the world’s eighth largest lake, Sahtu or Great Bear Lake.
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