I thought about doing a debriefing on the recent Canadian federal election. A lot of people read my posts on the charts of Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre, and I’m sure they were interested to hear my thoughts on how it all turned out.
I abstained from making a firm prediction on the winner because the skies were so muddy and the charts of the leaders were ambiguous. The results reflected this: the race was close and Carney’s Liberals failed to win a majority, with some ridings being extremely close – a matter of only a few votes.
Minority governments usually don’t last very long, about 18 months or so. The exception was the last one under Trudeau, because he forged an alliance with the NDP. We may see something like that happen again. The NDP were decimated and won only 7 ridings: they lost official party status; leader Jagmeet Singh lost his own riding and resigned; at the time of writing, they are still without a permanent new leader.
However, the Liberals only need 2 other seats for a majority, so as long as they can win over the handful of NDP they will be able to pass their bills. Canadians also aren’t eager to head back to the polls anytime soon, so the Conservatives need to play it carefully. Calling a non-confidence immediately is likely to backfire.
So, the first part of 2025 was busy in Canada and the year isn’t even half over yet. The skies promise big changes on the horizon.
I got really burned out on reading, thinking and writing about federal politics during the election. So today, I want to talk about one of the biggest astrological shifts of this decade, which will have a profound effect on Canada and Canadians: Neptune’s recent ingress into Aries, which marks the start of Canada’s Neptune return.
Also, I would argue that the 2025 Canadian federal election was actually a really good example of Neptune in Aries. The election occurred just a month after Neptune’s first ingress into Aries, and boy oh boy was there a lot of Neptunian delusion involved in that contest.
Canada’s Neptune return is a huge topic. I’ve been thinking about it off and on for a couple years now, but I’m sure I’ll have more to say as we get closer to the exact return. That’s not for several years – more on that below – but I still wanted to record some of my initial thoughts.
Neptune went into Aries on March 30, 2025. It will remain there until October 22, 2025, when it retrogrades back into Pisces. Neptune moves in Aries for good on January 26, 2026 and will remain there for 12 years, until 2038.
2025 gives us a preview of what Neptune in Aries will bring, and what Canada’s Neptune return might be about.
Recall that in astrology, Neptune rules dreams, hopes, illusions, delusions. Neptune is smoke and mirrors. It throws up visions that are enticing and horrifying in turn, but always intangible and just out of reach.
Aries is the first sign of the zodiac. It is a cardinal fire sign ruled by Mars that is all about charging off and starting new things, forging a new path ahead, hurtling forward impulsively. If Pisces is about dreaming, Aries is about doing.
Neptune doesn’t start off its journey in Aries alone. Saturn is hovering at the very end of Pisces and is just about to make its first ingress into Aries in a couple of days from when I’m writing this, on May 24, 2025. Saturn and Neptune have been dancing together at the tail end of Pisces for the last several months. I’ve written about this before, in my 2025 astrology forecast and 2020s decade forecast. In the 2025 forecast, I commented:
“Saturn is attempting to manifest Neptune’s dreams and illusions into physical reality, but it’s a frustrating process. Saturn represents materiality while Neptune is immaterial. 2025 will give us a dizzying array of false starts and broken dreams. There will be some tone shifts as the two shift from Pisces to Aries and back again. This will be in effect throughout 2025 and 2026, with a peak happening from March through October 2025.
If the past gives us any indication of what this conjunction might bring, we could see redrawn national borders. The prime areas of the world for this are the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine, but we could even see it in other parts of the world too. I doubt Canada will actually become the 51st US state, but there has been enough strife and division that we might see another Quebec referendum – and maybe this time it will actually pass.”
In the time since I wrote this, talk of another Canadian referendum has cropped up: this time, centered around Alberta sovereignty. The results of the federal election have amplified Western alienation, with many Albertans feeling a lack of representation at the federal level. (A tale as old as Alberta itself.)
Despite the conversations around this, I still think it’s extremely unlikely that Alberta would ever actually leave Canada. Stranger things have happened, but some pretty strange things indeed would have to happen before this would ever become reality. It’s likely to be yet another Neptunian delusion that may be enticing to some, but which will fail to manifest in any real way. Still, all the talk around this subject will continue for some time and is very aligned with the Saturn-Neptune transit and Canada’s Neptune return.
Speaking of Canada’s Neptune return, let’s talk about what that actually is. In astrology, a “return” refers to when a transiting planet returns to its natal position. You get a lunar return every month, when the Moon touches the point where your natal Moon resides. You have a solar return every year when the Sun returns to the exact position it was in at the time of your birth. This is usually, but not always, on your actual birth date – sometimes it’s a day earlier or later.
The most infamous astrological return is the Saturn return. The first Saturn return happens around age 28-30 and often signals an extended period of difficulty and major life change, thanks to the nature of Saturn. As always, your exact experience of these things will depend on your natal chart, as well as on the rest of the transits at the time. People born in 1996-97 are entering their Saturn return right now, which will be conjunct Neptune – bringing a very different flavour than those born in 1989-1990 who had their Saturn returns in 2020, conjunct Pluto. (Ouch – that was a rough one.)
Humans don’t get Neptune returns, because Neptune takes 165 years to orbit the Sun. Only longer-lived things, like countries, will experience one of those.
Canada was founded at midnight on July 1, 1867 with Neptune at 14°59’ Aries, only two degrees off the Ascendant at 16°54’ Aries. Therefore, the entry of Neptune into Aries signals the start of Canada’s Neptune return. The return won’t be exact until May 30, 2031. Two more exact returns occur on September 7, 2031 and March 27, 2032.
Neptune will be within a couple of degrees of Canada’s Ascendant from mid-2030 through early 2033. This will represent the peak period of Canada’s Neptune return.
For a primer on how I interpret Canada’s Neptune on the Ascendant, read my post on Canada’s natal chart.
Returns are always about “checking in” on the planet and seeing how it operates in the natal chart. They also show how things have changed since birth and/or the previous return, in relation to that particular planet, its significations, and the house topics it relates to.
Canada’s Neptune return will force Canadians to check in on the Neptunian hopes, dreams and delusions that they carry as a fundamental part of their national identity. Recall that Neptune represents the collective and collectivized ideas. Canada’s Neptune return will be about coming to terms with our collective identity as a nation. What does it mean to be Canadian? What will it mean to be Canadian in the future?
The renovation of Canada’s national identity has already been underway for many years. In 2015, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Canada as the world’s first post-national state with no core identity. In an interview with journalist Guy Lawson for the New York Times, Trudeau said that “[t]here is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
If you read the Wikipedia article that I linked above, you’ll see that it comments on two key questions raised by this comment: “Does a post-national state mean expunging borders?” and “Is a collective sense of belonging no longer desired?”
Fast forward to early 2025: the ramifications of Canada as a post-national state have reached a fever pitch and, in many ways, are being rejected. Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time in January 2025, Canadians and Canadian media has been obsessed with Trump’s actions and words. Trump represents a threat to Canada, both literal – for example, the impacts of his policy decisions on the Canadian economy – and existential.
I cannot recall another time in my life when Canadians have been more patriotic than they are now. Say what you will about Trump, but he has done more for national pride than any Canadian in recent memory. I’ve seen several neighbours hang a Canadian flag in their living room window. That’s just not a thing here and it was very noticeable.
Yet this sense of nationalism is not uniform across the country. As I mentioned earlier, the conversations around Western alienation and even separation has also reached a level that I also do not recall experiencing in my life.
I don’t know if a single cohesive, unified Canadian identity has ever existed, or is even possible. I think I used to have some sense of this when I was a child, thanks to what I learned in the Canadian public school system. But as I got older and did my own reading, thinking and experiencing outside the system, I became one of those alienated Westerners. I resent the sentiment that other Canadians seem to have about Alberta, that we are all a bunch of backwater oil-obsessed rednecks. I rarely read anything in mainstream Canadian news that I actually agree with, or which I feel represents my perspective and values.
Granted, I’m a weirdo and pretty nonconformist by nature, so I’m used to feeling alienated. But I know I’m not alone in this feeling among many Canadians, and there are many reasons why different Canadians feel this marginalization.
I’m not super well-traveled, but in addition to my hometown of Edmonton I’ve been to the major Canadian cities of Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. I’ve also visited a lot of smaller towns and rural communities in Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Yukon.
I noticed a shared sense of Canadian kinship in some of these places. A few years ago, I drove from Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska for a weekend trip. I was shocked at how familiar the people felt in Whitehorse, and how unfamiliar (and unfriendly) they were in Skagway. This probably wasn’t only a Canadian vs American thing – the radically different locales also certainly played a part – but there’s no denying I felt way more at home in Whitehorse.
But when I visited Montreal, I might as well have been in a different country. I didn’t really “get” Quebec separation until I spent some time there. The few days I spent in La Belle Province certainly didn’t make me an expert on the subject, but I finally gained some understanding of that issue which I had been completely blind to before.
Similarly, when I spent some time in Haida Gwaii, it felt very different than my experience of Canada. I wrote a few posts about it from the lens of food, as that was back when I was an active food writer. (Read those posts here, here and here if you like – they are pretty fun!) I noticed some similarities to home, but overall, it was such a unique community with its own specific history that lumping it under a label like “Canada” just felt meaningless.
OK, Mel – so what exactly are you getting at with this navel-gazing?
I’m trying to convey that these types of thoughts, feelings and conversations are going to occur more frequently and with greater impact as we move through the 2020s and into the 2030s.
I really think we’ll see new forms of Canadian national identity emerge over the course of Neptune in Aries. I think we’ll see both a rejection and reaffirmation of past identity, and new identity groups form. I’m not ruling out the possibility for the actual borders to be redrawn in some places.
Canada’s Neptune return will also completely revamp Canada’s relationship to Indigenous peoples. I’ve written before about how one of the ways I read Neptune in Aries on Canada’s Ascendant is the utter delusion Canadians have about how we’re the global good guys – a gentle, peacekeeping nation so different from our brash, uncouth neighbours to the south. But don’t look too deep under the surface, or you’ll uncover a campaign of polite genocide against the Indigenous people, which has only started to be addressed in recent years.
It will be very interesting to see how the Saturn-Neptune redrawing of national borders will apply to Canada’s Indigenous community. Those borders will become just as movable as any others. I don’t think Canada’s Indigenous Reserves will look the same in 20 years as they do now.
It’s a good time to dust off the history books and review what happened in Canada’s early years. In particular, I encourage my fellow Canadians to brush up on their knowledge of the Red River Rebellion and all the events that happened with the Métis people in Canada’s early years. The 1869 provisional government established by Métis leader Louis Riel formed the early incarnation of what would later become the province of Manitoba.
This event was the first crisis faced by Canada’s new federal government, and is very much about the position of Neptune on Canada’s Ascendant: the vision of Canadian national identity that Riel and the Red River Colony had was very different from that of the white settlers who formed government. Depending on who you ask, Riel is both a traitor and a national hero.
As Neptune creeps closer and closer to its position when Canada was founded, I find myself wondering who the twenty-first century Louis Riel will be, and what form this century’s Red River Resistance will take.
Neptune offers plenty of visions, but which one will Saturn manage to coalesce into reality – if any?
These are my early thoughts on Canada’s Neptune return. I’m sure I’ll end up writing more on this – we’ve still got six years before the return goes exact, after all. Plenty of time to collect examples on all the confusing Neptune visions and dreams swirling around us.