In Lower Canada, the celebration of the nativity of St. John the Baptist took a patriotic tone in 1834 on the initiative of one of the founders of the newspaper "La Minerve", Ludger Duvernay, who would later become the first president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society. In the spring of 1834, Duvernay and other "patriotes" attended the celebrations of the first St. Patrick's Day, the celebration of the Irish diaspora, in Montreal. This would give him and others the idea of organizing something similar for all the "Canadiens" and their friends.