Victoria Day – it sounds like a pretty straightforward holiday. And you’d think that it would have a relatively straightforward history. At least that what I thought when I decided to write a blog post about Victoria Day. And boy, was I wrong. This entire week has been an exercise in frustration. But that’s actually normal. A good historian can never assume that a particular subject is going to be a no-brainer, since sometimes the simplest questions have the most complex answers. And sometimes, when you’re a historian, even if you ask all the right questions, all you get is a week of abject chaos. Because that’s how history works – its messy, complicated, and sometimes, the answers just aren’t there. So in today’s blog post, while I will talk about the history of Victoria Day, I’m also going to talk about realities of doing history.