Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in Canada. This wonderful holiday gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect on the blessings and joys in our lives. I wrote about gratitude in one of my first Simple Living Sunday posts, so today I’ll share a brief history of this holiday in Canada.

What if today, we were just grateful for everything.

Charlie Brown

Three simple pleasures and highlights

Continuing my practice of celebrating the simple things in life, here are three simple pleasures and highlights of the last week.

• Last weekend we celebrated our niece Emily’s wedding. It was a beautiful fall day and it felt so wonderful to be able to gather for such a joyful celebration.
• The fall colours in our area are spectacular right now. I snapped the above pictures on a walk through our neighbourhood this week.
• Thursday was my last day at work before vacation. I am looking forward to 17 days off work!

This week’s simple living focus: Thanksgiving in Canada

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.

Meister Eckhart

The Canadian Encyclopedia reports that Canadians have been celebrating Thanksgiving as an annual holiday since 1879, although the date of the celebration differed from province to province. However, the Indigenous people who first inhabited this land celebrated the fall harvest long before that date.

Before it became an official annual holiday, though, our celebration dates back to the late 1500s, where a meal of salt beef, biscuits and mushy peas was the standard menu. Over time, that menu was replaced by what resembles our current Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, squash and pumpkin. In Newfoundland, however, Jiggs Dinner is favoured over turkey.  

We’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving longer than Americans

My American friends often ask me about our Thanksgiving. They might be surprised to learn that the first Thanksgiving celebration in what is now Canada actually pre-dates the first recorded American Thanksgiving celebrated by the pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1621.

When my American friends ask what our Canadian Thanksgiving is like, I usually respond that the meal is very similar, but Canadian Thanksgiving usually doesn’t involve watching football or planning the next day’s Black Friday shopping strategies.

Thanksgiving in Canada is the second Monday in October

Between the late 1500s to the early 1920s, the date of Canada’s Thanksgiving celebration varied from early October to early December.

After World War I, Thanksgiving was celebrated along with Remembrance Day on November 11. This continued until the 1950s.

In 1957, the Canadian government declared Thanksgiving to be an official holiday to be celebrated every year on the second Monday of October. It is a statutory holiday in all provinces except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. In Quebec, the holiday is referred to as Action de grâce.

What’s on the menu?

At our house, our Thanksgiving menu is pretty traditional: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, turnip, and corn, along with stuffing and glazed carrots made in the slow cooker. For dessert, there’s apple and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

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Let’s all be thankful this week

Even in the trials of life, if we have eyes to see them, we can find good things everywhere we look.

Joanna Gaines

Being thankful for life’s joys and simple blessings is always a good thing to do. Even if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, why not take the opportunity to count your blessings this week?  

Challenge yourself to write down three things you are thankful for every day this week. Gratitude will do your heart good.

To all my Canadian readers—Happy Thanksgiving. Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend or not, I wish all my readers a wonderful week full of gratitude and blessings.

Did anything about the history of Thanksgiving in Canada surprise you? Tell me your thoughts below.