June 20

Summer Solstice

National Indigenous Peoples Day celebration in Regina, June 21, 2023.

Today, Friday, June 20, the summer solstice takes place at 10:42 pm. It is both the longest day and shortest night of 2025 in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Indigenous Peoples lead celebrations across the country on the occasion of the Summer Solstice, a time for Indigenous Peoples to gather and commemorate since time immemorial.

In recent years, June 21 has been declared National Indigenous Peoples Day, an occasion when Canadians and Quebeckers from all walks of life join Indigenous Peoples, Métis and Inuit in actions which affirm and celebrate their right to be in the face of the colonial arrangements and relations the federal and provincial governments continue to impose.

The origins of celebrations on or around June 21-24 are ancient and varied. Among the original peoples, the Summer Solstice was celebrated with bonfires symbolizing the life-giving power of the sun. Today, these bonfires persist as the oldest symbol of these celebrations. These celebrations also marked the change of seasons and the bounty that came with the warm weather.

In Quebec, the Summer Solstice celebration is “an expression of exchange and friendship amongst nations living in Quebec.” A “Solstice of the Nations” is held by the Indigenous nations with a Fire Ceremony “to encourage closer ties among the peoples living on Quebec territory.” Nowadays, “the coals of that fire light up the bonfire of the Great Show of Quebec’s National Celebration on the Plains of Abraham.” This refers to the National Day of Quebec celebrated on June 24, which is the saint’s day of the biblical figure John the Baptist.

In Catholic France during medieval times, the celebration known as Saint John the Baptist Day took its name from the sanctuaries established by the Catholic Church to fight paganism. It was brought to the colonies of the French empire in opposition to the Summer Solstice celebrated by the Indigenous Nations around the same date. The Church, through the Council of Trent (1545-1563) attempted to Christianize that custom, a celebration of light around a joyous bonfire, by replacing it with a portrayal of submission in the person of Saint John the Baptist, “the lamb of God.”

In line with this, Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier, in his 1702 Catechism for the Diocese of Quebec, directed at the Canadiens, noted that the Catholic Church in the New World considered the Summer Solstice ceremony acceptable so long as the “dances and superstitions” of the Indigenous Peoples were banished.

The celebration of June 24 as Quebec’s National Day was, however, established by Quebec patriot Ludger Duvernay, publisher of the patriot newspaper La Minerve, and the elected members of the Patriot Party, in 1834. Even though it fell on the same date as Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, it was not the same but transformed by the patriots into a patriotic celebration.

Then, again to oppose the Quebec people taking up the road of creating a Republic, in 1908 Pope Pius X, taking up the British attempt to divide the people into so-called French and English Canadians, named Saint John the Baptist the patron saint of “French Canadians.” Sixty years later, on June 24, 1968 and 1969, at a time the resurgence of Quebec’s movement for independence and people’s sovereignty was in full swing, this symbol of division and submission was swept aside. Once again, the National Day celebration saw the people joyfully dancing around a bonfire.

Celebrations of the Summer Solstice across Canada on National Indigenous Peoples Day, June 21, 2022