July 1 was Moving Day in Quebec.

[randomness]

Historically, urban leases in Quebec began on May 1 and ended on April 30, but in 1973 the law was changed so students could move after the end of the school year. That law changed extended all leases that year until July 1, and it removed the requirement for a fixed-term lease.

Nonetheless, most leases in Quebec are still a year long, and they generally start on the first of July. Leases have started to spread out, but July 1st is still known as Moving Day in the cities of Quebec.

The resulting trash-picking opportunities on July 2nd are apparently extensive, as documented in this blog:

Anyone who wants to understand the vast excess of western society need only walk around anywhere in Montreal on July 1. There, you’ll find discarded furniture, empty boxes and lots and lots of garbage.



What gets me most about it, though, is the thought that before today, people had these things in their homes. Now it’s so useless even people walking the streets want nothing to do with them.

This is a post about Moving Day told in photos.

I feel like there must be some business opportunity to take advantage of the July 1 moving day in Montreal and the September 1 moving day in Boston, but I can't figure out what.

Edit: There's also this cheery press release from the Régie du logement: "For many households, July 1 is both a statutory holiday and their moving day! That is why, again this year, the Régie will be just a phone call away so as to respond to information requests from tenants and landlords on that often frenzied day.

"The Régie reminds you that a new tenant's right to occupy a dwelling begins on the first day of the lease, and that the tenant who is moving out does not have a day's grace to vacate the dwelling and remove all personal effects. That said, it is obviously not possible for everyone to obtain a moving truck at the same time. The Régie du logement therefore encourages you to be courteous and civic-minded, and exercise your rights in a reasonable manner."

(http://communiques.gouv.qc.ca/gouvqc/communiques/GPQE/Juin2008/25/c6038.html)

Comments

[rosminah.livejournal.com]

This happens every year in Isla Vista, the college town of Santa Barbara. It's a *mess* and there's even a tradition of burning the discarded sofas on the street.
The last two years there's been some strong campaigning for students to get rid of their junk more responsibly. Volunteer students are helping clean the streets, and on a more pro-active move, everyone is being encouraged to donate it to charity shops. There was a huge rummage sale this year and it raised thousands of dollars for good causes.
I do my fair share of freecycling, but I like the idea of using a charity shop as middleman because of the money it raises.

All that waste really frustrates me. Augh!

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Ah, the college student mentality. My main reaction to this is "OMG dumpster diving!"

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

What makes me feel a little better about this (but only a little, mind you) is that a lot of this stuff was probably trash-picked or bought used at least once already.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

It's as esrblog likes to say--the West (particularly the US, but certainly also applicable to Canada) is wealthy. Heck, most of the folks below the poverty line here are still *wealthy* (as in having lots of stuff, at least) by the standards of most of the world through most of recorded history, and lots of other countries today in the present.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Ah, but it isn't just college students.

When I was living in my last home, we had occasion to clean out the basement, which meant taking out old, broken chairs that had been there since before we moved in. Chairs that had sat in our unfinished basement, which *always* flooded with every rain and sometimes flooded six or more inches deep.

Anyway, we put them out for a bulk trash pickup day like the one r_ness described here. And we got people knocking on our door, asking for permission to take them! I don't mean poor people, or broke college students. No! I mean middle-aged suburban white people!

[redbird]

Yes. And if it's anything like my college and post-college experience, some of it has been passed down through several overlapping groups of roommates. When cattitude and I moved out of the place that he'd previously shared with Dr. Death, some of what we got rid of was stuff that long-moved-out previous roommates had left behind. And some of it was simply that we were subletting a furnished apartment in another city (for a few months), which shifted the equation of what was and wasn't worth taking with us. A friend who was moving into a different off-campus apartment got lots of old dishes and pots and pans, though; not trash-picked, handed off tidily in our kitchen.

It's true!

[sea-bound.livejournal.com]

And I'm in Montreal now . . . would you like pictures of the dump-mania? Possible gold mines on every corner.

Thanks for your e-mail--I'll reply as soon as I'm back, which will be M night.

S