Traditional celebration
In Canada, Thanksgiving is a three-day weekend (although some
provinces choose to observe a four day weekend, Friday–Monday).
As a liturgical festival, Thanksgiving in Canada corresponds to
the English and continental European Harvest festival, with
churches decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat
sheaves and other harvest bounty, English and European harvest
hymns sung on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend and scriptural
lections drawn from the biblical stories relating to the Jewish
harvest festival of Sukkot.
While the actual Thanksgiving holiday is on a Monday, Canadians might eat their Thanksgiving meal on any day of the three day weekend. In Canada, Thanksgiving is often celebrated with family, it is also often a time for weekend getaways for couples to observe the autumn leaves, spend one last weekend at the cottage or participate in various outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing and hunting.
History of Thanksgiving in Canada
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Canada. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving to have taken place in North America. Other settlers arrived and continued these ceremonies. Frobisher was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay.