Some quirks of the calendar will bring you a lot more fun next year

THOMPSON-OKANAGAN – Before you book your vacation next year, you might find some surprises you haven’t seen on the calendar — like an extra four long weekends next year.

Thanks to a few quirks of the calendar, all four date-based holidays fall on or near weekends this year. Canada Day, Remembrance Day and New Years Day all fall on a Friday in 2016.

Usually those holidays are orphaned in the middle of the week but next year they are true long weekends. Christmas Day next year also falls on a Saturday, for the fourth extra holiday weekend.

Canada Day and Remembrance Day, two date-based holidays that always fall on the same day of the month. The leap year in February 2016 adds an extra day and pushes them both onto Friday, creating the perfect storm of long weekends.

But here’s the really cool part: It’s going to be like that for the next three years. From 2016 to 2018, Canadians will enjoy 11 long weekends, the most that are mathematically possible. Each year, the date-based holidays move forward through the weekend, each time creating a stat holiday around the weekend.

So book your holidays and local campsites early this year and when you gloat to your work colleagues, be sure to tell them you read it on infoNEWS.ca

To contact the reporter for this story, email John McDonald at jmcdonald@infonews.ca or call 250-808-0143. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.