Happy Victoria Day!

Today I invite you to take a break from life's vicissitudes and have a holiday, because today is Victoria Day!

Typical Victoria Day Celebration

That's right, today we stand with our friends in Canada and celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday, a few days early to be accurate, but who cares?

Canada

So have some fun, turn off Steffie-the-Hobbit, don't get into any scraps with roving gangs of outlaw bikers, maybe take a break from compulsively reading the bad news which sweeps over us like an arching tidal wave. Whatever it takes.

Calgary

I might go on a Cell Phone Jihad, in which participants shoot up their old cell phones with high power rifles. Or I might not.

There's no rule. On Victoria Day.

LSP

Fort Calgary

Col. MacLeod

One of the things I like to do is stroll down to Fort Calgary to look at the statue of Col. James MacLeod, who sits on his bronze horse gazing out at the city's ever taller skyline and a Union Jack, which reminds us of a time not so long ago when Canada was a far flung Dominion of the Empire.

hang out more flags

MacLeod seems to have been one of those tireless men of the nineteenth century, an adventurer perhaps, who managed to combine Law, which apparently bored him, with military service and a founding role on the NWMP (North West Mounted Police). 

He was respected by the Indians and rather less so by Montana's whiskey traders. A brief biography talks of his vision: 

"James Farquharson Macleod exercised a decisive influence on the early development of western Canada. More than any other single individual, he was responsible for establishing the policies followed by the NWMP in their dealings with the Indians and for setting the tone of Canadian Indian policy in the NWT. His vision of the region was of a place where newcomers and the native population might live together in peace and where disputes could be settled by reason."

He died in 1894, just 20 years short of World War I and the opening shots of a new and different age.

Long live Queen Victoria,

LSP