Canadian Thanksgiving.

[Lallans]

This weekend is the Thanksgiving holiday in Canada, the official holiday being Monday, so best wishes to my fellow Canucks at home and abroad, and to everyone else, for a happy and well-stuffed one.

[vmac3205]

That means it is also Victoria Marathon weekend. I have run it 13 times, and I miss being there for it. Happy Thanksgiving!!

[ohiopiper]

I'll wish you a happy and festive Thanksgiving now if you'll wish me one next month.
Have a slice of pie for me, would you?

[Lallans]

I'll wish you a happy and festive Thanksgiving now if you'll wish me one next month.
Have a slice of pie for me, would you?

Thanks for the wishes. I already had two slices of particularly good pumpkin pie, one dedicated to you.

Due to people coming from out of town and so on, my extended family celebrated our Thanksgiving yesterday. Part of the fun used to be to try to get the married-in French Canadian members to try pumpkin pie, something that never entered their cuisine, apparently, because they generally regarded it as a degustant form of poison. However, the lines are drawn now and the converts tuck in while the others gag. Anyway, the nice thing about the Canadian form of Thanksgiving holiday is that it's very flexible; you are socially free to celebrate it anyway you want because there's almost no advertising and therefore no pressure- this is great for the people that make it happen (the women).

When I lived in a border era, the big Canuck excitement over US Thanksgiving started when Ronald Regan was president and US frozen turkeys were 19 cents a pound. We would swarm over the border filling up our freezers and consume the US birds on holidays throughout the rest year (because there's a marketing board here, our turkeys are hideously more expensive). And while those very low prices ended with the Regan era, the bargain remains and the tradition continues even though Canada Customs introduced draconian measures to control the flow.

[Madadh]

May you all in the north have a grand day, while we in the south celebrate some Italian dude effort for what St. Brendan did years earlier

[piperdbh]

I've heard of people smuggling cheap cigarettes, but never turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may I remind you to be thankful for unpleasant things you don't have.

[kiltedRTR]

I don't want to sound rude or ignorant, and I guess i can google it but what is the history behind the Canadian Thanksgiving? I sort of understand the "history" behind the U.S. thanksgiving but never the Canadian, or why it's on different days.

[Lallans]

I've heard of people smuggling cheap cigarettes, but never turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may I remind you to be thankful for unpleasant things you don't have.

I don't want to sound rude or ignorant, and I guess i can google it but what is the history behind the Canadian Thanksgiving? I sort of understand the "history" behind the U.S. thanksgiving but never the Canadian, or why it's on different days.

The joke used to be that you could spot a Canadian in a Vermont grocery store because he had a frozen turkey under each arm and a gallon jug of milk (89 cents or less in those days) in each hand.

I don't know that there's any big story behind our holiday. The date was supposedly chosen because it roughly corresponds with the Canadian harvest season and also with quite a few tradition harvest celebrations in Northern European cultures- but for all I know it was set up at the behest of the Canadian Turkey Marketing Board. And for sure, the exact date was picked to match the US Columbus Day holiday, for the sake of convenience. I would guess we would have gone with the US date for Thanksgiving except for the Thursday thing. Whatever, it works pretty well outside of Quebec, where it tends to get ignored as an Anglo-American concept; nor are Les Quebecois traditionally big fans of turkey or, as I already related, pumpkin pie. I always found that strange since they were here in advance of us Ecossais and would have found both in abundance. But take out turkey and pumpkin pie and what's left?

[piperdbh]

...take out turkey and pumpkin pie and what's left?

Dressing and gravy, my favorite beverage.

[Old Hippie]

***Brrrfffffttt***....Sorry. it was that last slice of pie.

We have it a month earlier up here because if we did it in November, people would freeze to death trying to get to Gran's house in Manitoba. It's now blizzard season on the Prairies.

The other odd thing is it's always the same date up here. Not this "third Thursday" stuff that always gives Americans a four-day weekend. This year we got a three-day weekend. Next year it'll be on a Tuesday, and I suspect we'll work Monday before and Wednesday after. Plus, we get a lot more shopping days before Christmas.

:ootd: