Commontide
Ecumenical Commemoration
National Day
July 1
also known as Dominion Day (former name, 1867-1982)
Canada Day keeps the anniversary of 1 July 1867, when the British North America Act took effect and three provinces became "One Dominion under the Name of Canada." Anglicans in Canada have provided for the day since 1918, when the first Canadian Book of Common Prayer printed a form of service for it. The observance is civil in origin, and the church's provision for it has changed considerably across four prayer books.
The Act that made Canada was passed at Westminster on 29 March 1867, but it did not make anything until a date was chosen for it. That was the mechanism the Act itself set out: section 3 authorized the Queen to declare by proclamation a day, not more than six months off, on which the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick "shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada." She fixed it, from Windsor Castle on 22 May, for the first of July. On that Monday the union came into being.
The keeping of the day began a year later, and it began from above. On 20 June 1868, the Governor General, Viscount Monck, proclaimed from Government House in Ottawa that the anniversary should be "duly celebrated," and called upon "all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the due and proper celebration." It was a single vice-regal instruction, not a law; the statute making the first of July a public holiday under the name of Dominion Day came eleven years after that. This day was proclaimed before it was legislated, and legislated before it was widely kept, which is the reverse of how most observances arrive.
The church's provision came later still, and it came all at once. The first Canadian Book of Common Prayer, agreed in 1918 and authorized for use at Easter 1922, printed a full form of service for Dominion Day, with proper psalms, two sets of special lessons, and five new prayers, one of them titled simply "For Confederation." Its petitions belong unmistakably to their moment: that God would "fashion into one godly people the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues," and that the country would "remain a people united and loyal to the Throne and Empire." The rite was built to serve more than one occasion; its own title offers it for "other Occasions of National Thanksgiving."
What followed was not a straight line. The revisers of 1962 dropped the standalone service on purpose, leaving a calendar entry, a table of lessons, two collects, and a thanksgiving to be assembled as a parish chose; Bishop Howard Clark had said as much in 1957, that such services were now "taken care of by provisions in the Table of Lessons." The empire quietly went out of the words at the same time: "our Empire on this continent" became "this land," and "loyal to the Throne and Empire" became "loyal to our Sovereign and our Country." In 1985 the Book of Alternative Services gave the day a single proper of its own for the first time, with a newly composed collect. That collect, lightly adapted, is what the 2019 Book of Common Prayer appoints, and what a congregation hears now: that God would "accept the prayers we offer for Canada, and give integrity to its citizens and wisdom to those in authority, that harmony and justice may be secured in obedience to your will."
The change across those books is real and worth seeing plainly. The earliest form gave thanks for an empire; the latest asks for honest citizens. The appointed psalm has its own answer to the anxiety underneath a national day: "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all ages." Whatever a country is or fails to be, the kingdom prayed for on this day does not depend on it.
You did not choose the country you were born into or the one you moved to, and you are asked on this day to pray for it anyway, which is not the same as approving of it. The collect appointed for Canada Day asks for two different things from two different sets of people: wisdom for those who govern, and integrity for everyone else. The second is the harder request, because it is the one addressed to you. The first lesson has been Deuteronomy 6 in every Canadian book since 1918, and it warns about houses full of good things that you did not fill, and about forgetting. Where, in the life you actually have, are you most likely to forget what you were given, and who would notice first?
The documentary base for this day is unusually good on its civil side and uneven on its liturgical one. The event is fixed by two primary texts: the British North America Act of 1867, whose section 3 supplies both the union and the mechanism by which its date was set, and the Queen's proclamation of 22 May 1867, which survives here only as recited word for word inside a later instrument. That later instrument is the founding document of the observance itself: Viscount Monck's proclamation of 20 June 1868, published in the Canada Gazette, appointing Wednesday 1 July as the day the anniversary should be celebrated. It is primary and contemporary, one year after the event.
The next civil step is the weakest-verified link in the chain. An Act of 1879 is reported to have made 1 July a public holiday under the name Dominion Day, and to have reasoned in its preamble from three July union events (1867, British Columbia in July 1871, Prince Edward Island on 1 July 1873) to the choice of date. Only one reader has seen that page, and a second could not reach it. The date is very likely right; the reasoning should not be treated as settled.
The name changed by statute in 1982. A private member's bill passed the Commons on 9 July of that year in a short sitting with few members present and no debate, met resistance in the Senate, and received royal assent on 27 October; the first celebration under the name Canada Day was in 1983. The chronology of the day's growth between those poles (jubilees in 1917 and 1927, federally organized events from 1958, the centennial of 1967) rests on a single modern reference article and should be read as provisional. The Holidays Act as it now stands names only three holidays, Canada Day among them, and makes 1 July a legal holiday "not being a Sunday," transferring it to 2 July when it falls on the Lord's Day.
The Anglican line is four books and about a century, and one common claim about it is simply wrong: the 2019 Book of Common Prayer did not institute this day. The 1918 Canadian book printed a form of service for it at pages 676 to 678; the 1962 revision deliberately replaced that service with a kit of parts; the Book of Alternative Services of 1985 gave the day its first single self-contained proper; and the 2019 book took the 1985 collect with two small changes, filed the day among five National Days with proper lessons, and appointed one set of readings. Those readings are themselves a recombination: Psalm 145, Deuteronomy 6:1-15, and Matthew 25:14-30 come from the 1962 table, while Matthew 22:16-21 matches the 1918 citation exactly and 1 Peter 2:1-6 shares 1918's opening verse. The 1985 readings were dropped entirely. No document states this genealogy; it is a match made citation by citation across four primary texts.
Two further things are contested rather than obscure. The day's category is doubly registered even within one church's own books: the 2019 Calendar files Canada Day under National Days, distinct from the Holy Days, while the official leaflet for the day is headed "Holy Day," as was the running head above the 1985 proper. And the day itself is contested outside the books. Since 2021, following announcements of unmarked graves at former residential school sites, a public movement has argued that the day should not be celebrated until that history is reckoned with, and a number of municipalities cancelled official events. Within the church the objection is older than that wave: in June 2017 Archbishop Fred Hiltz wrote that the anniversary "will be a time of national thanksgiving, and rightly so," and then that "for many #Canada150 will pass with much less of an air of celebration," directing the days running up to 1 July to a re-reading of the Calls to Action.
The day has no iconography, no proper chant, and no hymn composed for it; what it has is a set of national symbols and a civic programme. Fireworks and illuminations were there at the first observance in Toronto in 1867, and the federal ceremonies on Parliament Hill, organized annually since 1958, still open with the anthems and close with fireworks. Citizenship ceremonies are held across the country on the day, which makes it, functionally, a rite of incorporation into a body.
Two provincial and communal observances sit alongside the national one and should not be folded into it. In Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 July is also Memorial Day: the first day of the Somme, at Beaumont-Hamel in 1916, where the Newfoundland Regiment was destroyed. The morning is solemn remembrance; the afternoon is Canada Day. In Quebec, by a custom formalized in 1973, 1 July is the day residential leases turn over, and for a great many households the day is experienced chiefly as moving day. From 1923 until the repeal of 1947, Chinese-Canadian communities kept the date as Humiliation Day, with shops closed, flags at half-mast, and wreaths laid, in mourning for the immigration Act that took effect that day.
There is no fast, no vigil, and no eve. In the Roman Catholic Church in Canada the day is an ordinary ferial one whose readings may optionally give way to a votive Mass for Canada Day, carrying no rank and never displacing a Sunday.
British North America Act, 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 3), preamble and section 3: the source of "One Dominion under the Name of Canada" and of the proclamation mechanism that fixed 1 July as the commencement date. Wikisource transcription.
Canada Gazette, Vol. I, No. 52, proclamation of Viscount Monck, 20 June 1868: the founding instrument of the annual observance, quoted here for "duly celebrated" and for the call to "all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada." It also preserves, recited within itself, the Queen's proclamation of 22 May 1867. Wikisource transcription.
The Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1918; authorized 1922), "The Form of Service for Dominion Day and other Occasions of National Thanksgiving," pp. 676-678: source of "fashion into one godly people the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues," "our Empire on this continent," and "remain a people united and loyal to the Throne and Empire." Digitized text at justus.anglican.org, reachable over plain HTTP only.
The Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1962), Calendar p. x; Table of Proper Psalms and Lessons p. xlviii; Thanksgiving "For Confederation," pp. 58-59: source of "the scattered communities of this land" and "loyal to our Sovereign and our Country." Digitized text at anglican.ca.
Howard H. Clark, statement on the draft prayer book revision, 1957: source of the quotation that such special services are "taken care of by provisions in the Table of Lessons." Text at anglicanhistory.org; a non-preferred host, flagged as such.
The Book of Alternative Services (Anglican Church of Canada, 1985), p. 412: the day's first single self-contained proper, and the original of the collect now in use. Digitized text at anglican.ca.
The Book of Common Prayer (2019, Anglican Church in North America), collect p. 635; Calendar p. 689: source of "accept the prayers we offer for Canada, and give integrity to its citizens and wisdom to those in authority, that harmony and justice may be secured in obedience to your will." Psalm 145 is quoted in the New Coverdale Psalter of the same book, from the official Canada Day leaflet, which prints the psalm entire. Official PDFs at bcp2019.anglicanchurch.net.
Holidays Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. H-5, ss. 2-4: the current statutory name, the Sunday-transfer clause, and the three named holidays. Justice Laws Canada.
Fred Hiltz, "Beyond #Canada150: A Statement from the Primate on National Aboriginal Day 2017," 20 June 2017: source of "It will be a time of national thanksgiving, and rightly so" and "for many #Canada150 will pass with much less of an air of celebration." Published at anglican.ca.
Deuteronomy 6:1–15Psalm 1451 Peter 2:1–6Matthew 22:16–21 or Matthew 25:14–30
Almighty God, whose wisdom and love are over all: Accept the prayers we offer for Canada, and give integrity to its citizens and wisdom to those in authority, that harmony and justice may be secured in obedience to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.