Until I thought to look it up, I thought the Canadian Thanksgiving shared a similar (and less celebrated) origin story to American Thanksgiving. European settlers and native people, eating from the same table, celebrating the harvest. I figured it had only one major difference, that being the holiday is celebrated earlier because our harvest happens sooner.
But like I said, I looked it up. Apparently there is more to the story than just that.
An unnamed journalist at the Edmonton Journal claims Canadian Thanksgiving also has something to do with celebrating Martin Frobisher's safe return from a voyage to the north in 1578. Frobisher made three voyages into the north, but never managed to find the Northwest Passage. He did find tons and tons of ore to ship home to England though, which he thought contained gold. Turns out it was just iron pyrite (fool's gold) which left Frobisher's face a bit red. England eventually used it to pave roads, which I guess makes the best of a bad situation.
Frobisher's legacy attacking the Spanish earned him a knighthood, but his legacy as far as Canada goes is failure. And apparently that failure accounts for one of our national holidays that we are supposed to celebrate. I guess it speaks well to Canada that we accept, even celebrate, the best of intentions. We're so polite.
But with our other national holidays being Victoria Day (more or less a celebration of our mom's birthday) and Canada Day (which marks the day we officially moved out of our parent's house) is it really surprising that the nation struggles with its identity?
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