In the spirit of John Green’s book of the same title, our theme for the month of October is “the Anthropocene reviewed.” Writers were asked to review and rate some facet of human experience on a five-star scale.

A few weeks after packing up and moving to Canada in the fall of 2020, I celebrated my first Canadian Thanksgiving. 

Josh and I drove along the Don Valley and its blazing red maples to his parents’ house, where we joined them, his sister Laura, and a few cousins for a small pandemic Thanksgiving. Josh’s parents immigrated from Korea in the ‘70s, so there was plenty of rice, kimchi, and savory noodles to enjoy. But in a gesture of hospitality that I’ll always remember, Josh’s mother prepared her first-ever turkey to welcome me to the family. I made mashed potatoes and stuffing from my mom’s recipes, and we shared a wonderful Korean-Canadian-American feast. 

I don’t remember what we talked about—I still felt self-conscious since I hadn’t spent much time with the Songs yet and didn’t know any Korean. I know we chatted about our dog as she sniffed everyone and got to know them, and Josh’s dad chatted about Korea. Dinner was followed up with sliced fruit and hot tea. As I’ve learned since then, many East Asians use food just as much as words to show care. I felt their love, especially knowing that the closed borders would keep me from my own mother’s Thanksgiving that season.

Years ago when I first learned that Canadians had their own Thanksgiving, I smugly assumed they’d simply borrowed it from the United States’ tradition. I didn’t realize that the first North American settlers to have a feast of Thanksgiving did so in what’s now Nunavut, Canada, in 1578—more than forty years before the Pilgrims’ famous feast at Plymouth. 

Indigenous and First Nations celebrations of the fall harvest long predated this event, of course, but they served as inspiration for many European settlers who would later host their own celebrations. Like the States, Canada has its own story of natives and immigrants communing together, when in 1606 Christian settlers dying of scurvy on the Atlantic coast were rescued by Mi’kmaq people and later feasted with them in thanks.

The Canadian and American traditions of Thanksgiving developed mostly independent of each other until after America’s Revolutionary War. Here the traditions merged when monarchy loyalists in the newly independent United States left for Canada and brought with them the traditions of turkey, pumpkin, and squash. So my American smugness isn’t totally unjustified—but the Canadian part of me can take pride in having had the real first Thanksgiving. 

Logistically, Canadian Thanksgiving works great. It’s on a Monday, so you have the whole weekend to prepare your meal. Unlike Thursday, Monday is attached to the weekend, so you don’t have to take an extra day off for the holiday. And it’s not too close to Christmas, so you have some breathing room before preparing or traveling for another big holiday. No parades or football games or absurd shopping sales muddle the meaning—you enjoy the long weekend, you eat some good food with your friends or family, and that’s all there is to it. 

This year for Thanksgiving we joined the Kim family along with a dozen other members of Josh’s mom’s house church. The husband, Kang-Il, is a professional cook and spent all week preparing an incredible traditional Korean meal of mak-guksu: cold buckwheat noodles in a spicy sauce that had been marinating for days, topped with crunchy shredded veggies and slices of pig’s feet. After that came some truly magnificent Korean fried chicken. For dessert I brought homemade pumpkin pies, which some folks had never had before. Everyone ate their slice with chopsticks and I was thrilled after being complimented on how well I hold mine. I knew my pies were good when Kang-Il quietly took a second piece. After the meal his wife, Young-Mee, gave me a tour of the roses and minari in her garden and gave me cuttings of her succulents, and we all walked to the beach of Lake Simcoe. It was a beautiful day. 

I give Canadian Thanksgiving five stars. 

Laura Sheppard Song

Laura graduated from Calvin in 2015 with a degree in art and writing. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband Josh and dog Rainy. She works as an IT support analyst and enjoys painting, rock climbing, and exploring the city.