Labour Day has forever been a winning holiday. When I attended prep school or undergraduate university, it heralded the start of a new academic and social adventure, a punctuation of each year of my teenage life; and at law school it announced the peculiarly emblematic entry into my twenties at age 21. When I was working it afforded a break from what had traditionally been a complex and arduous summer. And now that I am past all that it marks the beginning of autumn and the end of a ravishing summer.

It is however impossible for me to overlook the colourful recollections I have of Labour Day on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. To this day I can recall my first sight fifty years ago of the towering sand dunes at the end of the Cape as we at last digested ourselves from the enclosed tree lined pathway along the rib of the entire Cape leading from Barnstable to Herring Cove Beach in PTown. It was magnificent! Its white shifting purity along smoothly sculpted mountains of sand, reflecting the yellow tinges of the setting sun, inviting the uninitiated spirit to a new world.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned the hard way that there’s no going back.  I refer naturally to the mistaken inclination to revisit the past as though it were possible. It constitutes one of the few things I accredit myself to have learned and profited from; that is, leaving the past where I found it, flavoured perhaps by occasional reminiscences, but otherwise in the envelope where it is kept safely.

For now instead I have the decided pleasure to stare upon an exceedingly luxurious almost unbridled field of greenery, wavering in a comfortable wind along the river which ripples in sync. And listening to my favourite cocktail jazz music. It borders on irresponsible pleasure, having hitherto fulfilled a day of passable dynamism by tricycling to new heights (literally: my endurance now allows me to press the pedals up from the river to the top of the adjacent compass overlooking the spread below); and of course afterwards motoring along the country roadway surrounded by corn stalks, windows down, thoughts percolating and wandering as aimlessly, nowhere to go, nothing to do. We have lately consecrated a number of absorptions, some in, others out. The clarity is positively invigorating!

The origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to April 15, 1872 when the Toronto Trades Assembly organized Canada’s first significant demonstration for worker’s rights. The aim of the demonstration was to release the 24 leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union who were imprisoned for striking to campaign for a nine-hour working day.

Labour Day was originally celebrated in the spring but it was moved to the fall after 1894 (see below) to coincide with a similar Labour Day holiday held on the same day in the United States of America.

The other reason is the historical background of Labor Day: In May 1886, a bomb exploded in Chicago, turning a labor rally into a bloodbath that claimed the lives of several police officers and civilians. This became known as the Haymarket Affair named after the place where the rally was held.

In the aftermath of the Haymarket Affair, May 1 became associated with labor protests and, in some cases, violence. In an effort to distance themselves from the Haymarket incident and to provide a more peaceful and unified observance of labor and workers’ rights, the US labor movement and government officials decided to establish Labor Day on a different date.

On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the Labor Day bill into law, designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day. This choice of date was seen as a way to avoid the associations with the Haymarket Affair and to emphasize the positive aspects of the labor movement.

In most countries around the world Labor Day is celebrated on May 1. The USA and Canada are the only two major countries that moved the holiday to the end of summer. One of the other reasons why the  Labour Day holiday is in September is the large gap between summer and autumn holidays (Independence Day/Canada Day and Thanksgiving).