Day, Redefined

This is the longest day of the year, and the post time corresponds to the solstice. I enjoyed the old Canadian legal definition of day:

"day" - means the period beginning one half-hour before sunrise and ending one half-hour after sunset and, in respect of any place where the sun does not rise or set daily, the period during which the centre of the sun's disc is less than six degrees below the horizon.

I love living in a country where the daily rising and setting of the sun is not necessarily a given. The sun coming up in the morning is often catalogued among the world's indisputables, like unrest in the middle east, bears shitting in the woods, and the Pope being Catholic. It's not unique to my country of course. Other countries also have regions that endure six months of night.

A couple of years ago they changed the legal definition of day, so it's pretty boring. It no longer discusses the possibility that the sun may not rise in the morning.

"day" or "daylight" - means the time between the beginning of morning civil twilight and the end of evening civil twilight.

But they can't change the fundamental nature of the country.

In far northern latitudes, when you consult the GPS page that is designed to display sunrise and sunset times, it doesn't give you a time at all. All you see is the word NEVER. That is so cool I whole this whole post in order to report it.