Moving Day

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Typical scene of people moving in the Quebec City borough of Limoilou, on July 1, 2007.

Moving Day (French: Journée du déménagement) is a tradition in the province of Quebec, Canada. It began as a humanitarian measure of the French colonial government of New France, who forbade seigneurs, the semi-feudal landlords of the seigneuries, from evicting their tenant farmers before the winter snows had melted.^{[citation needed]} In law, this date was set as May 1. Later, this evolved into a requirement that urban leases begin on May 1 and end on April 30. There are still laws protecting renters in Quebec from eviction during the winter.

In 1973, during the Quiet Revolution, the government decided that it would be better to move Moving Day to the summer, so that students would not have to move during the school year. The law changed Moving Day to July 1 as of 1974, but no longer set a fixed term for leases. However, tradition has held sway, and the vast majority of leases are still a year long and begin around July 1. In 2004, approximately 120,000 households moved on or around July 1, corresponding to 4% of the population.^[1]

Moving Day is a boon and a headache for commercial moving companies, and people often must reserve their services at least three months in advance.^{[citation needed]} During this period, moving companies work around the clock, with moving charges often being three times the normal rate. In Montreal, where as of 2002 only 36% of residents own their home, Moving Day is particularly busy.^[2] The difficulty of moving is further complicated because, by convention, most Montreal landlords do not provide their tenants with a refrigerator or stove, meaning that tenants are forced to bring theirs with them. Also, exterior staircases leading up to second, third, or even fourth-storey apartments are common, in part because historically this reduced the size of buildings and therefore decreased the owner's property taxes. These staircases are often narrow, curved, and metal – not ideal for nonprofessionals carrying major appliances. Cities also schedule extra garbage and recycling pickups for this period to deal with unwanted furniture and empty boxes left beside the road.^[3]

The bill that changed the date from May 1 to July 1 was introduced by Jérôme Choquette, a Quebec Liberal MNA.^[4]