I remember the tedious task in elementary school every year when October rolled around of writing a list of things I was thankful for.
Thanks to Thanksgiving, this was an annual treat that we all got to do, but no 10-year-old really knows what they're thankful for. I was thankful for the three-day weekend coming up and the two turkey dinners I was going to eat in a couple of days. So looking back, what I was really thankful for was having both sides of my family living close enough together that we could have Thanksgiving twice.
Now I'm thankful for having a job, something that was particularly difficult to come by in my home province of Ontario, and thankful I have a roof over my head in Estevan, something that is easy to come by in Ontario.
Like all holidays, the meaning of this weekend and how it came to be important is either lost to time or no longer relevant. I remember having a conversation with an American acquaintance about how this day actually started, and we agreed that it had something to do with Pilgrims. After doing a little research, I find that apparently we were dead wrong, and it actually has more to do with the harvest. Well, I can still enjoy a good Thanksgiving, whether I know why the holiday exists or not.
The other question I always had was who exactly I should be thanking for all these things I was being told I should be thankful for. I am used to thanking specific people who lend me a hand or call into the Mercury with a complaint about my column. Now that I know Thanksgiving is all about the harvest, I will thank the farmers for feeding me so well this weekend.
Upon doing a little more research, however, I learned that the celebration in this country has been held for a number of different reasons since 1799, which was then to "signal victory over our enemy and for the manifold and inestimable blessings which our Kingdoms and Provinces have received and daily continue to receive," according to the government's Canadian Heritage website. They don't mention who our enemy was at the time.
In 1802 we thanked God's mercies. In 1814 we thanked the glorious victories over our enemies, for which a celebration was held in April, and then we held another Thanksgiving later that year in September for the "end of sanguinary contest in Europe and to give the Dominions blessings of Peace." In 1833 we were thankful for the cessation of cholera, though I believe cholera is still around.
I don't know what we did to upset Russia, but peace was restored in 1856, and we held a Thanksgiving for that. We didn't celebrate our thanks to the harvest until 1859, and didn't recognize the harvest consistently until 1879.
The first celebration after Confederation in 1872 was to mark the recovery of the Prince of Wales from an illness. Canadians, it seems, were thankful for just about anything back then as long as it meant eating turkey.
I may have sounded pretty naive when I didn't know why we celebrate a day called Thanksgiving, but I'm sure nobody reading this knew all of those reasons for previously recognizing this day.
