Join in on this festive federal holiday, celebrating the birth of a nation by Canadians from coast to coast. See the many different ways in which this multi-cultural nation recognizes this occasion with fireworks, music, food, a day-off work, and other special events.

Photographs taken on the same day throughout Canada show children, cowboys, dancers, steel workers, soldiers, prisoners, clergy, police, and fishermen

Oh Canada: A Long Poem On Canada Day, by Canadian poet Martin Avery was written in the air, en plein air, in airplanes, as he flew from China to Japan to Canada (Dalian, Tokyo, Vancouver, Toronto) on Canada Day, 2014.

Celebrate Canada Day with this Preface to Charlotte Gray’s The Promise of Canada: 150 Years—People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country. “I knew it was time to engage Canadians in our past in a new way. I’ve always been fascinated by the gap between the modesty of my fellow citizens and the extraordinary success of this country. Every issue, every period, every region I explore, I find intriguing characters, painful tensions and surprising triumphs. Yet most of us know so little about the layers of history and ideas that make this country work. We have a unique and lively history, but too often it is told from only one perspective. Sometimes that perspective is political, other times it is regional, but it rarely captures the complexity of our sprawling land and diverse people. A big birthday, like Canada’s 150th, is the perfect time to bring both national heroes and unexpected guests to the table. I want their personal dramas and brilliant visions to bring a sparkle to the sesquicentennial.” —Charlotte Gray on The Promise of Canada, available October 2016 from Simon & Schuster Canada

On June 6, 1944 the greatest armada in history stood off Normandy and the largest amphibious invasion ever began as 107,000 men aboard 6,000 ships pressed toward the coast. Among this number were 18,000 Canadians, who were to land on a five-mile long stretch of rocky ledges fronted by a wide expanse of sand. Code named Juno Beach. Here, sheltered inside concrete bunkers and deep trenches, hundreds of German soldiers waited to strike the first assault wave with some ninety 88-millimetre guns, fifty mortars, and four hundred machineguns. A four-foot-high sea wall ran across the breadth of the beach and extending from it into the surf itself were ranks of tangled barbed wire, tank and vessel obstacles, and a maze of mines. Of the five Allied forces landing that day, they were scheduled to be the last to reach the sand. Juno was also the most exposed beach, their day’s objectives eleven miles inland were farther away than any others, and the opposition awaiting them was believed greater than that facing any other force. At battle's end one out of every six Canadians in the invasion force was either dead or wounded. Yet their grip on Juno Beach was firm.

A beautiful picture book featuring artwork by Canada's finest illustrators -- a true-north tribute to our nation and its children, from coast to coast to coast! Simple text describes the ample space available to our children in this country, and the freedom they have to grow and dream and share. With artwork from 13 of Canada's finest illustrators, each page is a celebration and a reminder of the infinite variety of our home and native land. Heather Patterson's free verse poem I Am Canada, originally published in 1996, gets new life in this beautiful, illustrated hardcover timed to celebrate both Canada's 150th year and Scholastic Canada's 60th anniversary.