Canadian Thanksgiving

Yesterday (Monday) was Canada's Thanksgiving.  I know, as your personal anthropologist/ethnologist, I really should have insinuated myself into a Canadian family in order to get invited to a Canadian Family Thanksgiving Dinner.  Unfortunately, I live in the International House of Pancakes.  Two flatmates are Hungarian, the Tuna Eater is Irish via the Arctic Circle, and there is me: the two Canadians live in far-away parts of Canada, so they did not go home for Thanksgiving.

I have drawn the following conclusions about the Canadian Thanksgiving:

1). Thanksgiving doesn't seem to be as big a deal in Canada as it does in the US: both socially and commercially.  The Canadian flatmates did not go home for the holiday, and the people at the Gallery I talked to either did not go home or did not go very far away.  Also, there have been no tv commercials or newspaper flyers advertising after-Thanksgiving Day sales.

2). The Canadian Thanksgiving meal seems to be the same as the American one.  Granted, my source for this is Hye-Sung, and the only dish she knew the English name for was 'big big turkey'.  (She went to Toronto with her flatmate, to the flatmate's family dinner.)

3). The paper conservator at the Gallery, Geoff, said that the Canadian Thanksgiving is so much earlier than the American one because the seasons change so much faster in Canada.  The Old-Timey-Canadian Harvest took place earlier in the year than the Old-Timey American Harvest.

I spent Canadian Thanksgiving at the CanadaHouse, making Uncle Joe's Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner: spaghetti and meatballs.  Then I started making the baby hats for Alpha and Omega- they'll be super-cute!