Summer is in the full force and festivals are starting in the city - it's time for fun!!

It's quite cool that Quebec has the holiday of St Jean Baptist today, on June 24. It's just a week before the day of July 1-st notably known as Canada Day.

The beauty of these two holidays going back-to-back is that we get two long weekends in the best time of the year weather-wise.

Here is what I found about the origins of St Jean Baptist day celebration:

"...It is not known why St-Jean-Baptiste came to be considered the patron saint of French Canada. One legend has it that a great many French-Canadians bearing that given name persuaded the journalist and patriot Ludger Duvernay to adopt it as the name of the national society of French-Canadians which he founded in 1834. In any case that was the name he chose, and the St-Jean-Baptiste Association (St-Jean-Baptiste Society from 1914 on) of Montreal took the maple leaf and the beaver as its emblems. The founding was celebrated 24 Jun 1834 by a banquet to which 60 guests were invited - Irish, US, and Canadian. Many among them sang their interpretations of patriotic songs, including George-Étienne Cartier who sang 'Ô Canada! mon pays! mes amours!' The celebration became annual, and gradually more elaborate, and spread to other localities in Quebec, in Acadia (1880), and in the francophone regions of Ontario, the Canadian west, and even the USA. The celebrations were suspended 1838-42 because of political troubles..."