Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (French: Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste), officially known in Quebec as La fête nationale, (English: National Holiday) is a holiday celebrated annually on June 24, the feast day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. In Quebec, it is a public holiday with festivities occurring on June 23 and 24 which are publicly financed and organized by a Comité organisateur de la fête nationale (Organizing Committee of the National Holiday). June 24 is also celebrated as a festival of French Canadian culture in other Canadian provinces and the United States.

Origins

The feast day of Saint John the Baptist or Midsummer was a very popular event in the Ancien Régime of France, and it is still celebrated as a religious feast day in several countries, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Spain, Latvia and Lithuania.

The tradition landed in Canada with the first French colonists. The first mention of celebrations of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in North America dates back to 1606, when settlers en route to the future Acadia rested on the coast of Newfoundland, June 23. The second mention of celebrations, according to the Jesuit Relations, occurred on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River on the evening of June 23, 1636, with a bonfire and five cannon shots.

National holiday

National holiday may refer to:

Grand Duke's Official Birthday

The Grand Duke's Official Birthday (French: Célébration publique de l'anniversaire du souverain), also known as Luxembourgish National Day (French: Fête nationale luxembourgeoise, Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuerger Nationalfeierdag), is celebrated as the annual national holiday of Luxembourg. It is celebrated on 23 June, although this has never been the actual birthday of any ruler of Luxembourg. When the monarch of Luxembourg is female, it is known as the Grand Duchess' Official Birthday.

Development of the holiday

The monarch's birthday has not always been celebrated on 23 June. Under William I (1815–40), the date was 24 April (although his actual birthday was 24 August), and under William II (1840–1849), it was 6 December, his actual birthday. This change created the strange situation of celebrating two grand ducal birthdays in 1840. Under William III (1849–90), the date was set at 17 June until 1859, after which, his birthday was celebrated on 19 February: two days after his actual birthday.

.quebec

.quebec is a new GeoTLD and Community Priority Application that was proposed to ICANN's New gTLD Program by PointQuébec, a non-profit organisation. The organisation aims to improve the businesses, culture, tourism, and online identity of Quebec and the Quebecois through the .quebec TLD. According to the PointQuébec organisation, .quebec will allow all Quebecers to register their domain names under .quebec.

PointQuébec's application for the GeoTLD was approved, and was delegated to the Root Zone on 16 April 2014. The application was supported by the Quebec National Assembly and other cultural, technical, and economic institutions in the city. It received "substantial financial support from the Québec government", and is a not-for profit organisation. The organisation will verify legitimate registrations via statements of intent through a post-verification registration system. quebec officially launched on November 18, 2014.

Along with TLDs such as .cat and .africa, .quebec and other new TLDs fall into the new category of GeoTLDs. The issue of new top level domains in general and .quebec in particular has been discussed at various ICANN-Meetings since 2005.

Quebec

Quebec (ⁱ/kwᵻˈbɛk/ or /kəˈbɛk/; French: Québec [kebɛk]) is the second-most populous province in Canada. It is the only Canadian province that has a predominantly French-speaking population, and the only one to have French as its sole provincial official language.

Quebec is Canada's largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division; only the territory of Nunavut is larger. It is bordered to the west by the province of Ontario, James Bay, and Hudson Bay; to the north by Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay; to the east by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador; it is bordered on the south by the province of New Brunswick and the U.S. states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. It also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

Quebec is Canada's second most populous province, after Ontario. Most inhabitants live in urban areas near the Saint Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, the capital. Approximately half of Quebec residents live in the Greater Montreal Area, including the Island of Montreal. English-speaking communities and English-language institutions are concentrated in the west of the island of Montreal but are also significantly present in the Outaouais, Eastern Townships, and Gaspé regions. The Nord-du-Québec region, occupying the northern half of the province, is sparsely populated and inhabited primarily by Aboriginal peoples. The climate around the major cities is four-season continental with cold and snowy winters combined with warm to hot humid summers, but further north long winter seasons dominate and as a result the northern areas of the province are marked by tundra conditions. Even in central Quebec at comparatively southerly latitudes winters are very severe in inland areas.

Quebec (AG) v Canada (AG)

Quebec (AG) v Canada (AG) 2015 SCC 14 is a Canadian constitutional law case concerning the federal government's ability to destroy information related to the Canadian long-gun registry pursuant to the federal criminal law power.

Background

In 1995, Parliament passed the Firearms Act, which required long gun owners to register their guns. The Supreme Court found that the Act was intra vires the federal criminal law power. In 2012, Parliament repealed the requirement to register long guns through the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act (ELRA) and sought to delete the information in its registry. The province of Quebec, wishing to create and maintain its own long gun registry, requested that the federal government share the data it had collected about Quebec long gun owners. When the federal government declined to share the information, Quebec argued that section 29 of the ELRA, the provision disbanding the long gun registry, was ultra vires the federal government.

At trial in the Superior Court of Quebec, the trial judge found that section 29 was unconstitutional as it violated the principle of cooperative federalism given that Quebec had take part in "gathering, analyzing, organizing, and modifying" the data in question. The trial judge required the federal government to share the information with Quebec.