Learn about the Canadian Holiday VICTORIA DAY and the English Phrase LONG WEEKEND

In this English lesson, I wanted to talk about today.

Today is Victoria Day.

This is a holiday in Canada.

I have a holiday today.

It's kind of nice,

which is why I'm making this lesson this morning

instead of yesterday

because yesterday we had a little bit of a party here

to celebrate Victoria Day.

By a little bit of a party,

I mean, my mom and sister came over.

We invited two people over.

We are still under pretty strong restrictions

here in Ontario,

but you're allowed to have just a couple people over,

and the good thing is all of us are vaccinated as well.

So it was a safe party, but it is Victoria Day.

We sometimes call this the May Two-Four weekend,

not the May 24th weekend.

We actually say Two-Four.

We say this because Victoria Day normally happens

right around the 24th of May.

Today it happens to be exactly on the 24th,

but other years, sometimes it's a bit earlier,

so it is a holiday today.

It is the May Two-Four weekend.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase long weekend.

We would call this a long weekend in English.

A long weekend is when you either have the Friday

or the Monday off work,

so instead of just Saturday and Sunday off,

you also have an extra day.

So it is a long weekend here in Canada.

I have to be honest though,

it doesn't really feel like a long weekend

because I'm home all the time,

so when you're home all the time,

it doesn't seem that different,

but it's definitely a long weekend here in Canada

because we have the extra day off today on Monday.

So to review.

Just something interesting about Canada for you.

Today is Victoria Day,

also called the May Two-Four weekend.

Usually this, the other reason we call it

the May Two-Four weekend is because in Canada

if you buy a case of beer,

it has 24 bottles or cans in it,

and we refer to it as a two-four.

So people will often say, I'm going to go to the beer store.

We have special stores to buy beer in Ontario

to get a two-four of beer.

So it's kind of like a funny name for the weekend

but it also refers to the size of a case of beer in Canada.

And then, also, it's a weekend where a lot of people

go to open up their cottage if they have a cottage up north.

And as I mentioned, this is a long weekend.

It is a little bit longer by one day than a normal weekend,

but, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Brent,

and Brent says, "Ah, poor tree."

- And my response was, "Don't worry.

"We usually plant a few more every fall."

So Brent was talking about,

in the last video, I talked about a tree

that we are planning to chop down,

but don't worry.

I know it sounds kind of,

yeah, extreme to chop a tree down.

Many of you in the comments were saying

"just leave the tree, don't chop it down.

"It's not harming anyone."

But Jen and I do live on a big property

and we do plant trees regularly.

In fact, this is one of the first trees

that Jen and I planted.

We planted this here when we moved here.

Why don't I turn this way, and as I walk,

you'll see how big this tree is now.

It's quite a large tree.

We're pretty happy that we planted it many, many years ago.

I think you can see it in the background there.

It's one of the trees that I sometimes sit under

when I do my live streams.

So don't worry.

When we chop down a tree,

we usually do plant one or two or three more in the fall,

and then, I was just going to walk over here

to show you there's the fire pit that we used last night.

You can actually still see that we left a few chairs

and a bench out here.

We had a bunch of lawn chairs as well

and it was a really nice evening.

We cooked some food over the fire.

We had some s'mores.

If you don't know what those are,

I'll put a picture right here.

Anyways, just a little bit about today.

I'll see you in a couple of days

with another short English lesson, bye.