Canadian Thanksgiving
In Canada, Thanksgiving is a similar holiday to American Thanksgiving, but is held on the second Monday in October. It is a statutory holiday in most parts of the country.
Cynics hold that the reason Canadian Thanksgiving is in October rather than November (when the holiday is celebrated in America) is that, by late November, there is simply nothing to be thankful for in Canada. In truth, the rationale for the date lies in different historical circumstances. Historically, it is tied to European harvest festival traditions, including special religious services on the Sunday. The particular Thanksgiving ceremony to which present-day Canada refers is, however, not a harvest ceremony (as in America or Europe) but the homecoming of Arctic explorer Martin Frobisher to Newfoundland in 1578. A separate French thanksgiving tradition also began in colonial France, with the advent of Samuel de Champlain's so-called Order of Good Cheer in 1604. Like the Order of Good Cheer itself, eastern Aboriginal harvest rituals have often been interwoven with European ones in Canadian Thanksgiving.
Traditionally, Canadian Thanksgiving is celebrated with a turkey dinner, sometimes on Monday evening but more commonly on Sunday evening. Some families prefer to go on holiday for the weekend. The Canadian Football League holds a special double-header on Thanksgiving Monday, similar to the American NFL's Thanksgiving Classic.
Legally, Thanksgiving is classified as a statutory holiday federally, and in all of Canada's provinces and territories except for Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. This means that federal employees, all railway, banking, and communications companies, and all employees in those provinces which recognize Thanksgiving are entitled to a paid day off. Employers are permitted to require employees to work on a statutory holiday, but they must pay their employees for working (usually at overtime rates), in addition to the separate statutory holiday pay.
Historically, Canadian thanksgiving days were irregular and shifting events rather than the annual celebration of today. For instance, Thanksgiving was proclaimed in British North America in 1763 following the signing of the Treaty of Paris (and thus the end of the Seven Years' War, in the French ceded Canada to England). Empire Loyalists who fled north to Canada after 1775 brought with them the American thanksgiving tradition. Yet another Thanksgiving weekend was proclaimed in April, during the 1870s, after Prince Edward VII recovered from a nearly fatal bout of typhoid. Thanksgiving has been observed annually since that decade, but today's date, in October, was not set until 1957.
