In a move that reflects just how important timing can sometimes be when it comes to history, a new image will be added to Hudson’s “We Are Canada” mural on the exterior wall of the Legion on July 1.
The image of Hal Herbert, the late former member of Parliament for the riding of Vaudreuil who lived in Hudson, will become the 62nd individual to be included in the mural on Canada’s birthday. The timing is part of the tribute, as Herbert is credited with rebranding the country’s national July 1st holiday, pushing through a motion in the House of Commons more than 40 years ago creating Canada Day, replacing the original name of Dominion Day for the statutory holiday.
“It’s quite a legacy for him to leave behind,” said Peter Schiefke, the current MP for the riding of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, who honoured Herbert’s significant but rarely referred to initiative in the House of Commons on June 13.
It was, as Schiefke described it in an interview with The 1019 Report, “late on a lazy, unassuming Friday afternoon in 1982,” when just a handful of MPs were still in the House of Commons that Herbert’s Private Members Bill, a proposed piece of legislation that rarely gains any traction or hope of making any headway through Parliament, was scheduled to see if it could get over a significant hurdle – its Second Reading in the House of Commons.
Herbert’s bill, labelled “an amendment to the Holidays Act,” attracted very little interest on that Friday, July 9, 1982, at about 4 p.m. That is when the veteran MP, who had the option to speak in the House in favour of his push to rename the July 1 holiday, looked around the room and realized there were only four other Liberal MPs and the Speaker of the House in the Commons. All the other MPs – including all opposition members – had either left for the weekend or had headed to the lounge for a cocktail, Schiefke said.
That is when Herbert made a strategic decision. Instead of rising in the House to advocate in favour of his bill, he availed himself of a second option – not to speak and allow all MPs present to simply vote on the bill.
The speaker of the House called the vote, and all five Liberal members present approved the motion. The amendment that proposed to rename the July 1 holiday “Canada Day” glided through.
“No one voted against it,” Schiefke said as he recounted the events of that day as recorded in the official log of the House of Commons.
And that is when Herbert made another cunning move. With unanimous consent of the House, Herbert moved to bring the bill to what is called “the committee of the whole,” the next procedural step in approving legislation.
All the members of the House of Commons on the floor – at this moment the only five remaining Liberal members – automatically formed the “committee of the whole,” and unanimously approved the bill in its third reading. And within a matter of moments, the bill sailed through all the hurdles needed to gain official approval in the House of Commons.
“In 1982 it passes the House because no one was paying attention,” Schiefke said.
The bill, was then sent to the Senate, where it was rigourously debated, but was ultimately passed. And the next summer, on July 1, 1983, Canada marked its first official Canada Day.
“It makes me proud,” Schiefke said, explaining how a representative of this region played such a pivotal role in renaming a national holiday that reflects the Canadian spirit.
“The change from Dominion Day, he felt, would serve to bring Canadians together, anglophones and francophones in his riding of Vaudreuil-Soulanges,” Schiefke said in the House on June 13, referring to the man who once represented the same riding he now holds, although the boundaries of the conscription have changed over the last decades.
In a small ceremony on July 1 this year, at 10 a.m., the mural on the exterior wall of the building that houses both the Hudson Community Centre and the Legion will see the addition of the image of Hal Herbert, a man who was born in England in 1922, served in the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, studied engineering in Scotland after the war and then moved to Canada in 1948, where he settled in Hudson and became a partner in Montreal-based construction company.
Herbert was first elected to the House of Commons in 1972, becoming part of Pierre Trudeau’s government. He would be re-elected three more times – in 1974, 1979 and 1980. He was defeated in the 1984 election by Pierre Cadieux, who became a member of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government.