The forums are awfully quiet when americans are too busy drinking beers...
Cheers to you all.

Thanks, coming from a German Canadian Texan.

Sorry to have missed wishing you a Happy Canada Day a couple of days ago. I thought of it and told my wife about it that morning, having lived outside of Toronto for 12 years back in my younger days.

In Quebec, some of us refer to Canada Day as being "Moving Day". It ends up being a good day to drink beers but for other reasons... Is there any other place in the world where people all move on the same date?

Interesting. I never heard of Moving Day, even after living in Canada for so long.

In older times in Germany and Austria they had a similar concept that all the field hands would move from one land owner to another on the same day of the year. (They would receive the pay for the entire previous year on this day and were then free to move.) This was the feast of Candlemas on February 2nd. Incidentally this Germany holiday was also the origin for Groundhog's Day in the US.

Amazing how old customs can be perpetuated over time while their origins become foggy as time passes.

The same still goes for New Zealand where all farm years end 31st of May and all new contracts start the first of june (and most of the labor)

Ton

Does that mean these people had some kind of "One-year slavery contracts" with landlords? Work for me the whole year and if you don't leave early, you get paid? That seems real harsh! (even compared with late 1800's where some french workers got a union and gained the right to stop 15 minutes for lunch... and as of this day, they only had to bring one pound of coal a day to heat the factory... But at least they got paid each week!)

Yes, exactly. You pretty much committed to an employer for the year and had to stay 'til the end to get paid. "You have to be present to win."

Cheers to you as well. But most Americans are doing other things on our Independence Day besides drinking beers. We are spending time with family, eating too many hot dogs and hamburgers, watching glorious fireworks, FREELY talking politics, FREELY talking religion without fear of dismemberment or beheadings or "honor killings", AGREEING how blessed we are here, RELISHING in our freedom, THANKING God and our military, and HUMBLED because of how much our FREEDOM has cost us over the last 200+ years. At the risk of sounding sappy, in the words of Irving Berlin and Kate Smith: "God Bless America"

Here in Boston many people move on September 1st since that's the day most leases begin, especially in areas where students live. The streets are a mess with all the moving vans and trash, and there's always a student somewhere who's not used to driving a rented truck, ignores a low clearance sign, and gets stuck under a bridge or tunnel.