Canadian Thanksgiving

  The view from the parking lot at Seneca College in King City

That's the Timothy Eaton estate home in the distance.  The campus

exists on his former estate, a 700 acre nature reserve. 

I've been thinking about Canadian Thanksgiving all
day today.  We're celebrating the occasion with a big
turkey dinner tomorrow, and spent most of the day
trying to find an organic free-range bird.  Sold out
in more than one market.  But we got one after four
tries.

All that driving around gave me plenty of time to
think about what Thanksgiving means to me.  When
I was a child, it meant big multiple family gatherings
at our summer cottage before we boarded it up for
another year.  Pumpkin pie was essential, so were
turkey and mashed potatoes, my mother's delicious
rolls, stuffing and women in the kitchen all day.

Now we have dinner with whoever is home, fiancées,
girlfriends, and sometimes friends too.  We clear out
my studio, iron a vintage white table cloth, deck the
house with even more flowers than usual, and
Steven cooks the bird, and the vegetables,
I help with the stuffing, my sons make the rosemary
roast potatoes, and Steven makes the pumpkin pies.
I make the salad.

Canadian Thanksgiving is a celebration of the harvest.
We give thanks for a great harvest, for our unusually
blessed lifestyle, and in honour of that eat a meal
together. It is not about religion, or history, or which
culture you grew up in.  And that's what I love about it.
Everyone can share in the harvest.  All races and
cultural backgrounds can get in the spirit together
and we all understand the meaning of the holiday.
The farmers' markets today were filled with the diverse
people this city is famous for, and they were all
buying the food they needed to have Thanksgiving
with their families and friends. Each family will
prepare a different meal including traditions from
their own country of origin and new traditions that
they developed here. Judging from the run
on turkeys, that part of the meal may be the same in
many homes. 

The best thing about living in Toronto was evident
today.  It was a beautiful day and the streets were
filled with families walking together, enjoying
a stroll after an early Thanksgiving meal, or
carrying home bags stuffed with groceries, so
the preparations could begin.

 If you're Canadian and are celebrating, Happy
Thanksgiving, if not Happy Thanksgiving
anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving.