The First Canada Day

(Photo: Wayne Cuddington, copyright The Ottawa Citizen)

From the closing passages of Donald Creighton’s The Young Politician:

By nine o’clock, the public buildings and many large houses were illuminated all across Canada. When true darkness had at last fallen, the firework displays began; and simultaneously throughout the four provinces, the night was assaulted by minute explosions of coloured light, as the roman candles popped away, and the rockets raced up into the sky…

In Ottawa, long before this, Monck and Macdonald and the other ministers had quitted the Privy Council chamber; and Parliament Hill was crowded once again with people who had come to watch the last spectacle of the day. The Parliament buildings were illuminated. They stood out boldly against the sky; and far behind them, hidden in darkness, were the ridges of the Laurentians, stretching away, mile after mile, towards the north-west.