Oh, how celebrating the May 2-4 has changed over the years!

We always called it the May 2-4 rather than Victoria Day weekend.  In Timmins, they called it the May Run.  Whatever its name, for me it has always been the first sign that summer is on its way.

Bang-o-Rama

As a kid this long weekend meant fireworks on Holiday Monday.  In the house on Samuel Street, where we lived until I was 8, we could watch Bang-o-Rama (a marketing genius thought of that name!) at the Kitchener Auditorium from our front porch.  

Then on Manchester Road, we would do our own fireworks with our neighbours and, of course, the burning schoolhouse was always a highlight!

Camping

When I was old enough to go camping with friends, that became the tradition.  A group of us would head up to MacGregor Point Provincial Park or Elora Gorge and spend the weekend in the great outdoors.

The predominant memories from those weekends are of rain and beer.  I don’t think we ever had a sunny weekend for camping, and maybe the beer made that seem okay.

They even caught fish some years!

For Gilles, the May long weekend has long been about camping.  He and his friends from university (along with a few others they met along the way) have been getting together for years. They have camped through sunshine, rain and even snow, usually without comfort stations. Maybe because I don’t drink beer anymore, but that is definitely no longer appealing; I am much better suited to hotels with “well-appointed rooms” as my mom used to say.

When the kids were little, I would often pack up the minivan and head to Kitchener to spend the long weekend with my parents.  My mom was never a fan of winter and she, too, loved to celebrate the upcoming summer.  We would often laugh and say how happy we were NOT to be camping with Gilles!

As they got older, Gilles started taking the boys with him.  Max and Phil loved their “boys’ weekends” with lots of fishing, food and laughs, and the crazy antics of their “elders”.  They also loved to collect wood for the fire and came home with many stories of all the “performances” from the weekend.

I’d much rather be getting a pedi!

That meant that Lisa, Bridget and I got to enjoy “girls’ weekends”.  We would get together with friends for manis or pedis, laugh at each other as we put masks on our faces, watch rom-coms and enjoy junk food.  Then we would savour the comfort of our own beds, rather than sleeping outdoors in all kinds of weather.  

“New Normal”

Gilles has stayed home the last 2 years, although he did have a zoom call with the gang on Saturday night.  Our pod (Gilles, Bridget, Adam and I) enjoyed pizza from The Oven and Sour Patch Kids, and watched The Proposal and American Idol.  It was the same, only different.  

I’m not sure what next year will have in store for us, but I do feel confident saying that we will celebrate the May 2-4 and the upcoming summer in a new and fabulous way.  I know it is lobster season for Phil and Jessica so they won’t be here, but I have my fingers crossed that we will have a bigger gang for next year’s celebration!