Why is Thanksgiving in Canada so Early
Thanksgiving in Canada is a quiet family holiday which takes place every second Monday in October. It is a statutory holiday in nearly all of Canada. Only the Maritime provinces don't get a day off on Thanksgiving Day. Even there, anyone working for a federally-regulated company still gets a holiday. Banks and post offices are closed all the way across Canada. Everywhere outside Atlantic Canada, just about every other retail store is closed as well.
The Canadian Parliament proclaimed the first official Thanksgiving Day on January 31, 1957, and set it permanently as the second Monday in October. It was to be "A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed." While churches still hold special Thanksgiving masses, mostly we celebrate Thanksgiving with the family.
Most of us celebrate it with a special family dinner. Depending on the family work and travel schedules and how things have been worked out with the in-laws, we can hold it either on Sunday or Monday. The big turkey dinner is just as popular here as it is south of the border. However, we also have a large multicultural population, so the dinner could be anything! One tradition most of us do share is pumpkin pie. That way, we can also use the outside of the pumpkin for early Halloween decorations.
The Canadian Football League (CFL) always has a nationally televised double-header on Thanksgiving Day. Canadian football is second only to hockey in the nation's heart. Grey Cup finals are held in late November, so the results of the Thanksgiving Classic are crucial!
Some of us try to squeeze in an extra weekend getaway, before the real snow hits. Just because Labour Day is the unofficial end of summer doesn't mean it's the end of outdoor vacations. October is a beautiful time of year in Canada. The fall colour is something that has to be seen to be believed. If there has already been a frost, there won't even be any mosquitoes.
There's no Black Tuesday to follow Thanksgiving Day. It's way too early to think of serious Christmas shopping.
That's also why we have no big Thanksgiving parades. Our Christmas parades won't be held until the last week in November or the first week in December, kicking off our serious shopping season.
The only thing that comes close is Kitchener-Waterloo's Oktoberfest parade. Everyone comes to Oktoberfest for the beer, but it's really a Bavarian harvest festival that traces its roots all the way back to Germany. What else would you expect from a place that used to be called Berlin? Oktoberfest lasts from the Friday before Thanksgiving until the following weekend. The parade is held on Thanksgiving Day. Two of Canada's private television networks carry it. It's a big draw, with over 150,000 visitors. That's a third of the size of Kitchener-Waterloo!
Quebec also celebrates its version of Thanksgiving Day, Jour de l`Action de Grace, on the same day as the rest of Canada. It is a statutory holiday, but it's not as important a family occasion as some other Quebec holidays. In Quebec, turkey dinners and such are seen as American things. It doesn't help that there hasn't been a Quebec CFL team since the Montreal Alouettes folded.
Many people wonder why Thanksgiving in Canada is more than a month earlier than its American counterpart. One obvious reason is the weather! By early October, every part of Canada can expect at least one frost, so the harvest had better be in by then.
The weather is a very important reason for the earliest recorded community celebration of a thanksgiving festival in Canada. When the original French settlers who crossed the Atlantic with Samuel de Champlain arrived at Ste. Croix in 1604, they gave thanks for their safe arrival. The vicious winter which followed claimed the lives of most of the settlers.
The next year, the settlement was moved to the mainland, on the southern shore of the Bay of Fundy, and was named Port-Royal. This was a much better place. When the Baron de Poutrincourt returned from an expedition of the region on November 14, 1606, the Order of Good Cheer (L'Ordre Du Bon-Temps) was founded by the Nouveau Noblesse of New France to celebrate his return. All the surviving settlers and local First Nations were invited. This was the first of many weekly feasts, which would take place annually thereafter between late fall and early spring. Two years later, the same settlement would be moved inland to become what is now Quebec City.
The Order of Good Cheer still continues to thrive in Nova Scotia, although its purpose has changed. It now honours people who are valued by Nova Scotia or the Acadian tradition in Canada. As of May 11, 2001, the Order of Good Cheer has official government recognition.
Back in Confederation days, we used to celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving Day on a Thursday in November, just like the Americans. Before that, we had colony-widedays of thanksgivingfor things like the end of a cholera outbreak (February 6, 1833) or the end of war between Great Britain and France (May 21, 1816).
Starting in 1879, we started celebrating a dedicatedday of general thanksgivingand blessings of an abundant harvest. A few of these days of thanksgiving included special, themed celebrations for Queen Victoria's golden and diamond jubilees and King Edward VII's coronation.
In 1899, we moved Thanksgiving Day to a Thursday in October, probably because of the weather. In 1908, we moved it again, this time to a Monday in October which kept changing around. In 1921, the Armistice Day Act brought Thanksgiving Day and Armistice Day together on the Monday of the week of November 11. This lasted until 1930.
In 1931, November 11 officially became Remembrance Day, but we still wanted Thanksgiving Day to fall on a Monday. We also wanted it to be distinct from Remembrance Day. For awhile, Thanksgiving Day fell more or less on the second Monday in October. However, when the 1935 election was called for October 14, Thanksgiving Day got kicked back to Thursday, October 24. The resulting controversy pretty much killed any idea that Thanksgiving should ever be celebrated on a Thursday again.
Starting in 1936, the second Monday in October was Thanksgiving Day by annual proclamation. It finally became permanent in 1957.
There's a lot of other traditions that got mixed together into the Canadian Thanksgiving Day along the way. American Loyalists who came to Canada after the American Revolution brought their stories of the Pilgrims and the first American Thanksgiving. Other European immigrants brought their own harvest festival traditions with them. And of course, our Canadian First Nations had been celebrating the harvest for a long time before Canadian settlements came into the picture.
