Ready for your second course of Explorica’s Thanksgiving treat? Here’s a look at how the holiday began in Canada. The most popular stories about Canadian Thanksgiving, known as Jour de l’Action de grace in the French speaking regions, involve two explorers with dangerous adventures. You could say the fall holiday is a celebration of survival.
Avoiding the fate of past explorers, Marin Frobisher survived his long journey in an effort to uncover a northern passage from Europe to Asia. Though the mission was unsuccessful, the fact that he actually returned was reason enough (if not more reason) to celebrate. And so in 1578, he held a ceremony to give thanks for his homecoming in the present province of Newfoundland and Labrador. This feast is known as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in North America.
Others believe the holiday began in 1604 when French settlers crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain (the very same who discovered and first explored the Great Lakes.) Gladly sharing food with the First Nations neighbors, the travelers held huge feasts of thanks annually and formed ‘”The Order of Good Cheer” which marked the harvests and other events.
Still another origin theory is that it all started as an old European farming custom of coming together to toast a plentiful harvest. The farmers filled a goat’s curved horn with fruits and grains called a cornucopia or the horn of plenty. It’s said they brought this tradition to Canada. But hundreds of years went by before the Canadian Parliament recognized the folk practice. The country didn’t have a set date to celebrate this end of the harvest until 1957 when it officially became the second Monday in October. To change it up even more, officials decided that every year the holiday would have a different theme marking an important event to be thankful for. Perhaps that’s where we get our custom of saying thanks for our individual blessings every year around the table.