awakeJul. 1st, 2015 at 11:49 AM
In honour and celebration of Canada Day, I thought I would offer some trivia on things Canadian today:
"O Canada" was commissioned by Théodore Robitalle, the Lieutenant Governor of Québec, for Saint Jean Baptiste Day in 1880. While it has been sung since 1880, it wasn't proclaimed Canada's National Anthem until 1980.
The Canadian Flag was inaugurated on February 15th, 1965 at an official ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Queen Victoria selected Ottawa as the capital of Canada, then a province, in 1857.
Canada is a name derived from the Iroquois word "kanata", meaning a "village" or "settlement".
There are three oceans that touch Canada - the Atlantic on the east, the Pacific on the west, and the Arctic to the north.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was included in the Constitution Act in 1982. Unlike the majority of democratic countries whose basic law derives from one document, Canada's basic law derives not only from a set of documents known as Constitution Acts, but also a set of unwritten laws and conventions.
The name of the highest mountain in Canada is Mount Logan. However, having said that, on October 4, 2000, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced that Mount Logan would be renamed Mount Pierre Elliott Trudeau. After a public outcry against the idea, it was decided to keep the name Mount Logan. Sir William Edmond Logan was one of Canada's greatest surveyors and scientists. Without getting political here, for many people the issue was not so much whether or not Trudeau deserved it, but more the importance of retaining the history of Canada which is too often forgotten.