TORONTO, October 6, 2004 –  Canada’s Thanksgiving –first celebrated in 1859 -- has little to do with Pilgrims, nor did it take place aboard Martin Frobisher’s ship on a visit to Baffin Island in 1578, according to research conducted by York University researcher Peter Stevens.

Stevens, a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at York, says that Ontario’s Protestant church leaders appropriated the American autumn holiday in the 19th century and transformed it into an instrument of Canadian nationalism. “Protestant clergymen, more than any other cultural authority, deserve credit for establishing Thanksgiving Day as an annual celebration in Ontario," says Stevens, in a research paper entitled, A Wealth of Meanings: Thanksgiving in Ontario, 1859-1914.  He notes that their inspiration did, in fact, come from New England, but that they did not simply duplicate the American Thanksgiving festival.

The eventual loss of the Protestant religious emphasis on Thanksgiving in the early 20th century, says Stevens, opened up the celebration to Catholics, workers, ethnic minorities and other groups originally excluded from the clergy's notions of Thanksgiving. Canadians eventually democratized the holiday and adopted their own traditions.

Some Canadian Thanksgiving facts

• Protestant clergy successfully lobbied the Canadian government to create Canada's first, national Thanksgiving in 1859. But it was only proclaimed sporadically. 
• By the 1870s, American holiday traditions -- family gatherings, turkey dinner and stories of pilgrims – came to Canada, creating commercial opportunities for businesses and a way for Catholics to celebrate the day as a non-religious event.
• In 1908 the federal government changed Thanksgiving to Monday from Thursday (at the request of the railways who wanted a long weekend that would increase holiday travel).
• From 1921 to 1931, Armistice Day (now Remembrance Day) and Thanksgiving Day were both observed on November 11, but the different emotions evoked by these two events proved incompatible. The two holidays were separated again in 1932.
• Canada's Thanksgiving varied from year to year and fell as late as December 6. It occasionally coincided with the American Thanksgiving, celebrated on the last Thursday of November, beginning in the 1870s. Because the holiday was too late in the year for Canadians to spend the day outdoors, in 1899 the federal government scheduled the holiday for mid-October most years. 
• Canadians' adoption of family Thanksgiving dinners opened up commercial opportunities, and businesses did all they could to promote holiday consumption. Railways sold Thanksgiving tickets at cut rates and department stores designated almost anything as “Thanksgiving goods" without which one's holiday would not be complete.

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