As Canadian expats in Costa Rica gather today to celebrate one of their most important national holidays, a few will reflect on whether this celebration is appropriately named. Though it may seem as if July 1^st has always been known as Canada Day, this holiday has only been officially called as such since 1982, and some would like to revert to the old “Dominion Day.”

In the province of Guanacaste, many Canadians will surely gather at Bar La Perla, a popular watering hole in Playa Potrero, part of the Gold Coast beaches of Costa Rica. This beach bar is owned by Saskatchewanian Pearl More. As reported by Kas Roussy for The Toronto Star earlier this year:

La Perla is so popular among this crowd, it’s known locally as “the Canadian Embassy.” In the late 1970s, Pearl, now retired, heard that Canadians were travelling to Costa Rica and investing in land. She did the same, buying three “cheap lots.”

Potrero wasn’t much back then, just pasture and a few houses. By 1980, [Pearl] opened “La Perla” on a nearby commercial lot. The place wasn’t fancy. One stove, one refrigerator. But the food, says Canadian regular Greg Myers, is what keeps the customers coming back.

It stands to reason that some of La Perla’s regulars may choose to bring up the old Dominion vs. Canada Day debate today in Costa Rica. According to a historical news report published earlier today by Staff Reporter Robin Levinson King of The Toronto Star, the Canada Day naming was a bill that quickly passed the House of Commons during a slow day in Ottawa. This Liberal bill was ostensibly an attempt to:

remove lingering symbols of the British heritage to meet the growing separatist movement in Quebec

Conservatives have objected to this renaming; they believe that “dominion” is not really an allusion to British colonialism but a symbol of heritage. Even a young Prime Minister Stephen Harper supported Dominion Day as a Member of Parliament in 1996; he once stated that getting rid of Dominion Day was akin to destroying Canada’s past.

If this debate is still taking place in 2015, it will likely continue to be debated in the future. Surprisingly, the name of this national holiday is not the only Canadian patriotic symbol officially adopted in recent decades. As posted by the Embassy of Canada to Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras on its Facebook Timeline yesterday:

The maple leaf is one of the most recognizable of ‪Canada‬’s symbols and has been used to represent the area since the 1700’s. However the maple leaf did not appear on the National ‪‎Flag‬ of Canada until 1965. 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of our beloved red maple leaf.