Tie that binds the nation (Editorial)

The pitch for a new national holiday

We had one of those defining Canadian moments in January.

No, it wasn’t about hockey or the other national past-time, arguing about health care. For a brief moment when nature aligned itself just so, every corner of the nation was hit with the same cold front. And it sat there for more than a week, a big, blue, unmovable blob covering the weather channel’s map of Canada.

Sudbury minus 20. Ouch. New Brunswick minus 40. That hurts. Charlottetown minus 60. Okay, I can only hope the weather channel mixed up the wind chill calculation on that.

Atlantic Canada was buried in enough snow to make finding your car an archeological expedition and Cape Breton resembled an iceberg off the Nova Scotia mainland. People in Nunavut were even admitting it was cold in Toronto. From coast to coast, north to south, no matter where you live, or came from, whether you were young, old, rich or poor, the same thought occurred on the same day, every day, for days on end. “Enough already. It can stop being cold now.”

It didn’t matter if you were the CEO or a trainee, there was at least one day when you just didn’t want to open the front door, let alone attempt the frozen journey to work.

It’s an issue that cries for HR intervention. What every workplace needs is personal “it’s-too-darn-cold-to-come-to-work days.”

There’s already a precedent for this. Many organizations grant personal days employees can use as they choose, but this would be different. Not a day to schedule personal business — medical appointments, home chores, child or elder care, looking for another job (not that anyone does that) — but a day where employees are encouraged to pull the covers tight and hibernate.

For years, the idea of a national holiday during winter’s darkest days has cropped up, but Canadians are tired of waiting for federal relief.

The Guinness beer company has launched a marketing campaign to make St. Patrick’s Day a Canadian holiday, and more power to Ireland’s famous liquid, but March 17 is too late to wait. Besides it seems at bit odd to ignore John A. MacDonald’s birthday while opting for a beer commercial.

John A.’s Jan. 11 birthday has long been mentioned as a suitable winter break, but this doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Interestingly, Jean Chretien’s birthday also falls on Jan. 11, and since he’s searching for a legacy maybe he’ll give us a retirement present. At this point even Stephen Harper may support making Chretien’s birthday a holiday if it means he can avoid warming up the car that day.

But Jan. 11 is still too close to the Christmas/New Year’s break to make a real impact on the winter blues. With all due respect to John A., and prime ministers born in the summer months, Canada’s post-Second World War leader Louis Saint-Laurent deserves to be honoured with a national day-off. In addition to his key role in the development of the St. Lawrence Seaway (isn’t that something we can all get behind), he has that rare quality we’re looking for in a figure head — a Feb. 1 birth date.

But while efforts to lobby for recognition of Saint-Laurent’s achievements (okay, his mom’s achievement) are underway, Canadians still need that floater day.

Talk about an issue that can use an HR champion. Get the senior team to institute it’s-too-darn-cold-to-come-to-work day and anything negative employees have ever said or thought about the HR department will disappear. We promise.

John Hobel is Canadian HR Reporter's managing editor. His "Editor's Notes" column appears every issue in Canadian HR Reporter.

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