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=1

made 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.