Canadian Thanksgiving
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40 free Canadian Thanksgiving trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Canadian Thanksgiving is older than most people guess and odder than the tidy story of turkey and family suggests. Its roots run through an English sea captain giving thanks among the ice, a French colonial dining club, wartime refugees and a date that wandered around the calendar for decades before the government finally pinned it down. This quiz covers the whole holiday: the explorers and settlers behind the first feasts, the proclamations and oddities that shaped the modern long weekend, the regional dishes that change from coast to coast, the bird at the centre of the table, and the parade and sporting traditions that fill the day. It suits anyone hosting a Thanksgiving gathering, teachers looking for a classroom game, and trivia fans who want to know why Canada celebrates weeks before its neighbour. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story as you play.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did contestants do with giant pumpkins at a yearly October event in Windsor, Nova Scotia?
Paddled them across a lake
Contestants paddled them across a lake, sitting inside the hollowed-out giants for a half-mile race that drew 10,000 spectators in 2008.
Q 02Explorer Martin Frobisher, host of a 1578 Arctic thanksgiving, thought his cargo of rock held what?
Gold
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.
Q 03Martin Frobisher's crew gave thanks in 1578 over salt beef, biscuits and which British side dish?
Mushy peas
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.
Q 04The Order of Good Cheer feasts of 1606 were meant to protect French settlers from which disease?
Scurvy
Scurvy had ravaged the settlers' earlier winter camp, and because idleness was blamed for it, the feasts came with hunting duties and entertainment.
Q 05Canadian Thanksgiving always falls on which day of the week, creating an October long weekend?
Monday
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.
Q 06Canadian Thanksgiving turkeys descend from birds first domesticated in which present-day country?
Mexico
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.
Q 07Which British Columbia city gave its name to a no-bake bar served at Thanksgiving out west?
Nanaimo
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.
Q 08Since 1971, Canadian Thanksgiving has shared its date with which American federal holiday?
Columbus Day
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.
Q 09Which gooey Ontario pastry, first printed in a 1900 Barrie cookbook, is a Thanksgiving favourite?
Butter tarts
Butter tarts fill a pastry shell with butter, sugar, syrup and egg, and whether raisins belong inside is a matter of national debate.
Q 10Martin Frobisher's 1578 thanksgiving came during his hunt for which sea route to Asia?
The Northwest Passage
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.
Q 11Often called Canada's first Thanksgiving, Martin Frobisher's 1578 ceremony took place where?
Nunavut
Nunavut is where the fleet anchored, in a Baffin Island bay that still carries Frobisher's name, as did the territorial capital until 1987.
Q 12Which French explorer founded the Order of Good Cheer, a round of feasts at Port-Royal, in 1606?
Samuel de Champlain
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.
Q 13Canada's Order of Good Cheer feasts predate which settlers' famous 1621 harvest meal at Plymouth?
The Pilgrims
Q 21From 1921 to 1930, Canada held Thanksgiving on the same day as which since-renamed observance?
Armistice Day
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.
Q 22The first Order of Good Cheer gathering in 1606 staged a play starring which Roman god?
Neptune
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.
Q 23Marc Lescarbot recorded Chief Membertou of which First Nation joining the 1606 Port-Royal feasts?
Mi'kmaq
Mi'kmaq chiefs were treated as guests and equals at the table, and their hunters helped supply the game eaten that winter.
The Pilgrims' meal became the American origin story, yet the Massachusetts feast trails both the French at Port-Royal and Frobisher's Arctic service.
Q 14Which refugees from the American Revolution carried the turkey-dinner Thanksgiving to Canada?
Loyalists
Loyalists fleeing the new United States settled in what became Ontario and New Brunswick, bringing customs such as turkey and squash to the table.
Q 15Thanksgiving goes by which French name in Quebec, where the holiday is marked far more quietly?
Action de grâce
Action de grâce draws less fuss in Quebec because the holiday's Protestant, British-flavoured origins left many Catholic French Canadians cold.
Q 16Which league stages the Thanksgiving Day Classic, a holiday-afternoon game long hosted in Montreal?
CFL
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.
Q 17Canada's only major Thanksgiving Day parade is the showpiece of which Ontario festival?
Oktoberfest
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.
Q 18Fort Langley, British Columbia, holds a Thanksgiving-season festival for which local harvest?
Cranberries
Cranberries are harvested by flooding the fields so the floating fruit can be corralled, and Fort Langley's October festival dates back to 1995.
Q 19Which US president made American Thanksgiving annual in 1863, years before Canada did the same?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln acted in the middle of the Civil War, while Canada's first annual Thanksgiving followed in 1879 and was held in November.
Q 20Perogies and cabbage rolls are Thanksgiving staples for many Canadians with roots in which country?
Ukraine
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.
Q 24Halifax held a day of Thanksgiving in 1763 to mark the end of which global conflict?
The Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War ended with France handing New France to Britain, and the citizens of Halifax answered with a special day of thanks.
Q 25Canada's first Thanksgiving after Confederation marked which future king's recovery from illness?
Edward VII
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.
Q 26Which Governor General, the first born in Canada, issued the 1957 proclamation fixing Thanksgiving?
Vincent Massey
Vincent Massey signed the proclamation on January 31, 1957, ending decades in which the date had been announced one year at a time.
Q 27Canada moved Thanksgiving in 1935 because its usual October date clashed with which national event?
A federal election
A federal election had been called for October 14, 1935, so the holiday shifted while voters swept Mackenzie King's Liberals back to power.
Q 28Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in most of Canada, but which region treats it as optional?
The Atlantic provinces
The Atlantic provinces are the exception: Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, for example, leave the day to employers, though federally regulated banks still close.
Q 29Newfoundlanders often pick which meal, named for a comic-strip character, over Thanksgiving turkey?
Jiggs dinner
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.
Q 30Thanksgiving tables in Quebec tend to swap the usual pumpkin dessert for which other pie?
Apple 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.