It's that time of year again! Yes, Quebec celebrates St Jean Baptiste day on June 24th. Now, a lot of people ask me what this holiday is or "Who's that?". Well, here is a wikipedia article that describes it. The last section of that page (that talks about the politics of the day) is the part of this celebration that I've noticed to be the most apparent. Like any long-running holiday, St Jean Baptiste Day has lost a lot of its original meaning and has become more about partying at free concerts than about any sort of cultural preservation.
For me, though, June 24th is important because it's the first real thing I did when I got to Montreal a year ago. We arrived in Montreal on June 20th, 2005 and I started my new job on June 27th, 2005. June 24th was nestled right in between those two significant events, so each year at St Jean Baptiste Day I will remember that it is the anniversary of me coming to Canada.
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Although I do agree that for most people this is just one more holiday, for some of us St-Jean-Baptist day is a day to remember our roots and remember the long way we have come and the long road ahead. It's a day for dreamer and hopeful to imagine what our "country" would be like.
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