Petition to designate a national holiday for butter tarts circulating in Ontario

As you may — and certainly should — already know, the butter tart is an Ontario invention, through and through, and one Grimsby man is on a mission to win recognition for the dessert on a national scale.

Canada has spawned no small number of life-changing inventions: insulin, IMAX and a little thing called the telephone, but the fruits of national ingenuity all too often go unsung.

Grimbsy, Ontario resident John Meissner believes that the butter tart is one such Canadian invention that deserves a little more time in the sun. That's why, in late February 2026, he filed a petition through the House of Commons to declare an official National Butter Tart Day.

It's only fair, the petition argues, seeing that other foods like poutine and cinnamon have national holidays in the country, and British Columbia marks Nanaimo Bar Day on May 17, that these flaky-crusted, maple-filled sweet treats get their share of the glory.

"Establishing a National Butter Tart Day would honour Canadian culinary history, support our domestic bakers, egg farmers and dairy industry, and promote national pride," the petition reads.

Should the petition pass, the holiday will be observed on April 19, the date that Mrs. Mary MacLeod, a central figure in the history of butter tarts (more on that later), passed away.

At the time of publication, the petition has garnered nearly 200 signatures, with a whopping 141 of them hailing from Ontario, the home of the earliest recorded butter tart recipe (once again, more on that later.) For the petition to be brought to the House of Commons, the petition must earn at least 500 signatures before it closes on June 25.

A brief history of butter tarts

Depending on who you ask, butter tarts can be traced back as far as the late 17th century, when hundreds of young women known as the King's Daughters or Filles du Roi emigrated from France to settle New France.

They brought with them, of course, their knowledge of French baking and cuisine, with an expanse of new ingredients at their disposal to experiment with. The butter tart, with its flaky, buttery pastry shell, almost certainly evolved with the generations these women spawned.

The earliest published recipe for butter tarts dates back to 1900 in The Women's Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital Cookbook from Barrie, wherein one Mrs. Mary Ethel MacLeod (not to be confused with Mary Macleod of shortbread fame) contributed a recipe for butter tart filling.

Since the days of the King's Daughters and Mrs. MacLeod after them, the butter tart has proven itself an enduring national icon in every sense of the word. It's appeared on stamps and is the subject of a major annual festival that draws tens of thousands of attendees.

And who knows, maybe the next step in the history of butter tarts is a national holiday to mark the dessert's enduring significance.