Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. At home in Canada, the sun rises before 5 a.m. and sets after 8:40 p.m., giving nearly sixteen hours of daylight. Yet after two weeks in Fife and Moray, Scotland, Canada’s longest day feels almost short. There, as we travelled northward through the days leading up to the solstice, it often seemed that the summer sun never truly set. Evening stretched past 10 p.m., darkness never fully arrived, and the sky retained a lingering silver-blue glow through much of the night before dawn returned a few short hours later. Over those two weeks, we gradually lost our sense of where afternoon ended and night began. Harbours, village streets, and coastal paths remained illuminated long after we expected darkness, creating the feeling that the day was continuous—a single extended northern summer day unfolding from one sunrise to the next.
Last Updated on June 22, 2026 | Published: June 21, 2026