Thanksgiving in Canada

The United States and Canada have many, many things in common and one of those things is that both countries celebrate Thanksgiving – one, on one given day, and the other, on another given day – each year.  

Oh yes, how important it is to give thanks!  How important it is to bring the good in our lives into view!  There is ALWAYS something to be thankful for, let’s face it – always!

Canadian Thanksgiving is today  – the second Monday in October.  Throughout this vast country, you can find families sitting around their dining room tables celebrating this important day of thanks.  American Thanksgiving is celebrated from shore to shore in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November each year.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed this fixed date for Thanksgiving into law with Congress  in 1941.

Yes, a day of thanks……a day of thanks for the harvest.  But this holiday in Canada did not start out as a day of thanks for the harvest.  It started out as a day of just plain being thankful for having survived the long journey from England to what is now known as Canada.  Martin Frobisher had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean.  On his third and final voyage to this region in 1578,  he declared a day “to give thanks to God”.  This feast, years later, would continue as more people arrived in the Canadian colonies.

Samuel de Champlain and the French settlers who came to “New France”, as they called Canada, in the early 1600’s, held feasts at the end of the harvest season, rejoicing in their bounty.

Throughout the years, thanksgiving occurred at different times, for different reasons.  The first official Canadian Thanksgiving occurred on April 15, 1872, when the Prince of Wales recovered from a serious illness and the nation was wont to give thanks for it.

In 1957 it was declared that there would be a holiday on the second Monday in October each year for the nation to give thanks.  And, so, it has been and continues to be.

Canadian Thanksgiving is much like American Thanksgiving in that it is a holiday when families and friends get together to give thanks!  Turkey is the what the majority of people eat as they celebrate all the good in their lives.

Canadian Thanksgiving happens to coincide each year with Columbus Day here in the United States.  Christopher Columbus was an amazing visionary who the majority of people thought was nuts.  He “knew” that there was land in the New World but needed funds to make the journey and prove this knowledge.  No one would back him, calling him crazy, until Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain thought there was something to what he was saying and gave him the chance to prove it.

Yes, indeed, Columbus did not care what people thought about him – he KNEW!  I often think about and reflect upon how difficult this had to have been for him.  On one hand, it was very difficult but on the other hand, he had no choice because he just knew and had to follow what that “inner voice” was telling him.  What a lesson for all of us!

Being a Canadian, I am actually in Canada this week celebrating, with heartfelt thanks……celebrating the love, joy and abundance that is in my life.