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MaxQ’s “Where are you from” thread http://www.wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=8253&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&part=all&vc=1made me think of something that is apparently is unique to Québec. It is not done in any other province in Canada or anywhere else in the world. On July 1st of every year Québec streets are jammed with our official migration – known locally as MOVING DAY. This is the day that everybody who wants to move, does. Leases (rental contracts) all run from July 1st to June 30th. If a person decides to leave his parents’ home, or gets married on, say, February 1st, a lease is made up to run from February 1st to June 30th of the same year, or June 30th of the next year…just to get him in line with the rest of the province. Needless to say, when two or three people are trying to move into an apartment complex and two or three are trying to move out, it is havoc as all the moving vans try to hustle to be the first one at the door. Moving companies do a booming business on this one day and starve the rest of the year. Last year, a gentleman from Ireland came over to make a documentary about this migration and the history behind it. The most he came up with, after searching through archives for weeks, was an edict by the government passed some time in the 30’s or 40’s changing moving day from May 1st to July 1st because it caused less of a problem with children’s school schedules. Why everybody originally moved on May 1st is still a mystery. I know this is not strictly a word question, but seeing as we have members from just about everywhere, I thought it would be interesting to find out if there was anything with the same uniqueness that could be attributed to your region.
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Carpal Tunnel
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 Incroyable! Do you mean that no one moves on any other day?! I'm sorry, but that is one of the funniest things I've ever heard, and there is certainly no NZ custom that comes close to that for sheer humorous surrealism. If you have any other gems of this calibre, please do share! 
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Mais oui, a few people do move on other days - when they leave their parents house or when a couple of people get married, or break up. But then, the leases they sign are set up with the proper amount of months to put them back on track with the rest of the province. From then on and forever, they move on the 1st of July. What makes matters worse is the fact that July 1st is Canada day - a celebration of our confederacy. So you have party people and movers on the street at the same time. In some areas I would say the best way to describe it is HAVOC. I am glad to report that this is probably one of the only quirky and unexplainable things that is part of the Québecois gestalt (this and our overwhelming love of desserts made with brown sugar). But we are a happy people !
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This truly is a bizarre phenomenon. I think that I would have to move every year in January for fear of feeling trapped for another year. (this comming from a person who has moved 4 times since May of 1998  )
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Carpal Tunnel
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>This truly is a bizarre phenomenon. I think that I would have to move every year in January for fear of feeling trapped for another year. (this comming from a person who has moved 4 times since May of 1998)
But Xara, where could you go?
TEd
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Actually, if she moved in January, she would have to settle for a dive that nobody else wanted because those are the left-overs from Moving day.
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I am rather embarrassed to say that Jo’s “Holiday is Here” thread brought up an other Québec quirkiness – the construction holidays. In Québec, 80 percent of the population takes their vacation during the last two weeks of July. Shops close down, warehouses and manufacturers grind to a halt and offices are shut down. Naturally, beaches and resorts are full, and you can’t get a room for the life of you.
This came about the 20’s or 30’s I believe. The government of Québec implemented legislation to insure that construction workers (who were treated miserably back then) earned at least a minimum wage and were allowed two weeks respite from the job. They determined that the last two weeks of July were the nicest of the summer (or the only summer in our case) so those were the weeks the construction companies had to let people take off. A domino effect was created since wives (who back then worked in factories and as secretaries) took their vacations at the same times as their husbands…and thus a two-week stop-work came into effect.
I will HAVE to stop telling you people these things. Your impression of us will be widely skewed. All right, you’re all invited up for a good ‘joie de vivre’ Québecois party. It’ll show you what a great bunch we really are.
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bel:
I think this is also common in England. I spent a month or so on a bike in England in '77, and I seem to remember that I was told to avoid a certain area because they were all going to go on holiday and the roads would be jammed with caravans.
On inquiry, I learned that different parts of England tended to have holday at different times of the summer. Of course in almost a quarter of a century that may have changed a bit, but knowing England and the English I suspect not much.
And doesn't Paris close down for August?
TEd
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enthusiast
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Australia just about shuts down and goes to the beach from late December until mid January.
December is sheer madness as everything hits at once - the end of the school year with its speech nights and other presentations, ditto for sporting organizations' end of season celebrations, family preparations for Christmas (shopping for presents and for victuals for the festive season) and for long summer holidays, office Christmas parties (usually several, by the time you have whole-of-company, department, clients', suppliers' etc), and all of this whilst most industries are working flat-chat right up until Christmas dealing with the rush caused by the fact that they are about to close for 2/3/4 weeks!
By contrast, in January you're lucky if a tradesperson or a commercial concern will even answer the phone.
Christmas seems an unnaturally early start to the school summer holidays. From a climatic point of view, many people would prefer the more predictably warm period of mid January to end of February. We often find that the really hot stinking weather (say 38C/100F+, and I'm in one of the more temperate areas) hits just as the kids go back to school at the end of January.
I think that the northern hemisphere gets a better deal out of Christmas. You get a nice little cheer-me-up in the middle of winter when you need it most, all the traditional snow-and-reindeer stuff works better without the blowflies and sunburn, and it isn't complicated by as many other activities.
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