The National Holiday of Quebec (French: La Fête nationale du Québec)is celebrated annually on June 24, St. John the Baptist Day. June 24 continues to be celebrated as a festival of French Canadian culture in other provinces and in the United States. The feast day of Saint John the Baptist or Midsummer was a very popular event in the Ancien régime of France. In 1908, Pope Pius X designated St. John the Baptist as the patron saint of French Canadians.During and after the Quiet Revolution, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day became very political. The religious symbolism associated with the celebrations was rejected by the younger generations. To respond to the Quebec nationalist reappropiation of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, the federal government promoted July 1 as a national holiday for Canada. In Italy the feast of St. John is important especially in the valleys of Piedmont, traditionally connected with the French Savoy. Actually, they distinguish between St. John the Headless and St. John with the Head. June 24 is St. John with the Head, and it is the Christian version of the celebrations for the summer solstice. In this shot, people is relaxing at the park along the canal of Lachine. Here a small museum on the fur trade remembers the days when Lachines (which means The Rapids) was a very difficult point of the river. The Mohawks of the nearby Kahnawake specialized as boatmen for the fur companies. I took this shot among others to send it to the Action Challenge. In the end I didn't and I post it here. The Great Montreal denizens, of which Lachine is a southern 'banlieu', seemed victims of a fitness frenzy fever, and I tried to give you the idea. Thank you for your kind comments.