40 Fun Facts About Canadian Thanksgiving

What did contestants do with giant pumpkins at a yearly October event in Windsor, Nova Scotia?

Contestants paddled them across a lake, sitting inside the hollowed-out giants for a half-mile race that drew 10,000 spectators in 2008.

Explorer Martin Frobisher, host of a 1578 Arctic thanksgiving, thought his cargo of rock held what?

Gold fever sent Frobisher back north with 15 ships and 147 miners, but the 1,350 tons of ore he carried to England ended up as road fill.

Martin Frobisher's crew gave thanks in 1578 over salt beef, biscuits and which British side dish?

Mushy peas rounded out a meal held after ice and storms had scattered Frobisher's fleet, with chaplain Robert Wolfall preaching a sermon of thanks.

The Order of Good Cheer feasts of 1606 were meant to protect French settlers from which disease?

Scurvy had ravaged the settlers' earlier winter camp, and because idleness was blamed for it, the feasts came with hunting duties and entertainment.

Canadian Thanksgiving always falls on which day of the week, creating an October long weekend?

Monday has been the fixed day since 1957, but the big dinner can happen any time over the long weekend, and Sunday is the most common choice.

Canadian Thanksgiving turkeys descend from birds first domesticated in which present-day country?

Mexico is where Mesoamerican farmers tamed the bird at least 2,000 years ago, and Spanish ships carried it to Europe in the 16th century.

Which British Columbia city gave its name to a no-bake bar served at Thanksgiving out west?

Nanaimo gave its name to the three-layer treat of crumb base, custard icing and chocolate, which first appeared in print under that name in 1953.

Since 1971, Canadian Thanksgiving has shared its date with which American federal holiday?

Columbus Day falls on the same date as the Canadian holiday, though several US states and many cities mark Indigenous Peoples' Day on it instead.

Which gooey Ontario pastry, first printed in a 1900 Barrie cookbook, is a Thanksgiving favourite?

Butter tarts fill a pastry shell with butter, sugar, syrup and egg, and whether raisins belong inside is a matter of national debate.

Martin Frobisher's 1578 thanksgiving came during his hunt for which sea route to Asia?

The Northwest Passage was Frobisher's goal on three voyages, and he mistook the bay that now bears his name for its entrance and called it a strait.

Often called Canada's first Thanksgiving, Martin Frobisher's 1578 ceremony took place where?

Nunavut is where the fleet anchored, in a Baffin Island bay that still carries Frobisher's name, as did the territorial capital until 1987.

Which French explorer founded the Order of Good Cheer, a round of feasts at Port-Royal, in 1606?

Samuel de Champlain had the diners take turns wearing a chain of office, and whoever wore it had to hunt or fish to supply the next feast.

Canada's Order of Good Cheer feasts predate which settlers' famous 1621 harvest meal at Plymouth?

The Pilgrims' meal became the American origin story, yet the Massachusetts feast trails both the French at Port-Royal and Frobisher's Arctic service.

Which refugees from the American Revolution carried the turkey-dinner Thanksgiving to Canada?

Loyalists fleeing the new United States settled in what became Ontario and New Brunswick, bringing customs such as turkey and squash to the table.

Thanksgiving goes by which French name in Quebec, where the holiday is marked far more quietly?

Action de grâce draws less fuss in Quebec because the holiday's Protestant, British-flavoured origins left many Catholic French Canadians cold.

Which league stages the Thanksgiving Day Classic, a holiday-afternoon game long hosted in Montreal?

CFL teams have played more than 120 Thanksgiving games since the league formed in 1958, with Montreal's Alouettes the usual hosts since the late 1990s.

Canada's only major Thanksgiving Day parade is the showpiece of which Ontario festival?

Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo bills itself as Canada's Greatest Bavarian Festival, and its official keg-tapping is held on the Friday before the holiday.

Fort Langley, British Columbia, holds a Thanksgiving-season festival for which local harvest?

Cranberries are harvested by flooding the fields so the floating fruit can be corralled, and Fort Langley's October festival dates back to 1995.

Which US president made American Thanksgiving annual in 1863, years before Canada did the same?

Abraham Lincoln acted in the middle of the Civil War, while Canada's first annual Thanksgiving followed in 1879 and was held in November.

Perogies and cabbage rolls are Thanksgiving staples for many Canadians with roots in which country?

Ukraine is the ancestral home of more than a million Canadians, and they are the largest single group in several rural parts of the West.

From 1921 to 1930, Canada held Thanksgiving on the same day as which since-renamed observance?

Armistice Day got November 11 to itself in 1931 so that veterans would have more recognition, and it took the name Remembrance Day that year.

The first Order of Good Cheer gathering in 1606 staged a play starring which Roman god?

Neptune and his court welcomed the colony's leader home from a coastal voyage, and the play later lent its name to the Neptune Theatre in Halifax.

Marc Lescarbot recorded Chief Membertou of which First Nation joining the 1606 Port-Royal feasts?

Mi'kmaq chiefs were treated as guests and equals at the table, and their hunters helped supply the game eaten that winter.

Halifax held a day of Thanksgiving in 1763 to mark the end of which global conflict?

The Seven Years' War ended with France handing New France to Britain, and the citizens of Halifax answered with a special day of thanks.

Canada's first Thanksgiving after Confederation marked which future king's recovery from illness?

Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, had pulled through a serious illness, and the April 1872 day was a civic holiday instead of a religious one.

Which Governor General, the first born in Canada, issued the 1957 proclamation fixing Thanksgiving?

Vincent Massey signed the proclamation on January 31, 1957, ending decades in which the date had been announced one year at a time.

Canada moved Thanksgiving in 1935 because its usual October date clashed with which national event?

A federal election had been called for October 14, 1935, so the holiday shifted while voters swept Mackenzie King's Liberals back to power.

Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in most of Canada, but which region treats it as optional?

The Atlantic provinces are the exception: Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, for example, leave the day to employers, though federally regulated banks still close.

Newfoundlanders often pick which meal, named for a comic-strip character, over Thanksgiving turkey?

Jiggs dinner takes its name from the hero of the strip Bringing Up Father, an Irish-American who never lost his taste for corned beef and cabbage.

Thanksgiving tables in Quebec tend to swap the usual pumpkin dessert for which other pie?

Apple pie or apple crisp is the favourite in Quebec and the provinces to its east, while pumpkin remains the staple across most of the country.

Which flatbread, a staple from Inuit to Métis kitchens, often joins Indigenous Thanksgiving tables?

Bannock goes on the table of Indigenous families, some of whom see the holiday as a celebration of native foods such as turkey, squash and corn.

In Western Canada, which meat is sometimes served with or instead of the Thanksgiving turkey?

Ham is a common Western stand-in for the bird, and other regional Thanksgiving tables in Canada feature salmon or wild game.

Eastern Canadian cooks flavour turkey dressing with which herb, used the way sage is elsewhere?

Summer savory is so traditional in the East that it flavours a thick meat dressing of ground pork made for roast fowl.

A newly hatched turkey, the bird at the centre of Thanksgiving dinner, is known by which name?

Poult is the standard word for a turkey chick, with turkeyling as a rarer alternative, and the adult females that raise them are hens.

Which fleshy flap droops over a Thanksgiving turkey's beak and lengthens when a male courts?

Snood is the term for the forehead flap that elongates when a male struts, while the one hanging under the beak is the wattle.

The Thanksgiving cornucopia recalls a Greek myth about the horn of which animal, nurse to baby Zeus?

A goat named Amalthea nursed the hidden infant in the best-known telling, and the horn he snapped off in play gained the power to provide unending nourishment.

Haudenosaunee farmers give which name to corn, beans and squash, a trio grown side by side?

The Three Sisters help each other grow: cornstalks give the beans a trellis, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil, and broad squash leaves shade out weeds.

Which amino acid in turkey is wrongly blamed for drowsiness after Thanksgiving dinner?

Tryptophan is no more plentiful in turkey than in other meats, and the heavy load of carbohydrates served with it is a likelier cause of the slump.

Male turkeys, the Thanksgiving centrepiece, are stags in Britain but go by which name in Canada?

Toms is the term shared by Canada and the United States, and a wild male's springtime gobble can carry up to a mile.

Which English monarch backed the voyages of Martin Frobisher, host of an early Arctic thanksgiving?

Elizabeth I put £1,000 of her own money into the second voyage, and had waved the first expedition off from a window of Greenwich Palace.