Happy Thanksgiving! Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of October, which makes today the day. It’s a good moment to ask where the holiday came from, and how it reached New Brunswick.
A Holiday Older Than Canada
Indigenous peoples in Canada celebrated the fall harvest long before European settlers arrived. The first European thanksgiving in North America is usually credited to explorer Martin Frobisher. In 1578, on a voyage searching for the Northwest Passage, his crew gave thanks for surviving dangerous waters, in the area of Baffin Island in what is now Nunavut. That was decades before the Pilgrims’ 1621 harvest feast in Massachusetts.
The holiday took a long time to become a fixed date on the calendar. The first Thanksgiving after Confederation was observed on 5 April 1872, and it became an annual event on 6 November 1879. Over the years the date shifted around, and it was eventually settled on the second Monday of October. Harvest comes earlier in Canada because of the shorter growing season.
So, When Did New Brunswick First Celebrate?
There is no single documented “first Thanksgiving” date for New Brunswick. What the historical record shows is that the tradition arrived with settlers from New England.
In the late 18th century, two major groups moved north to what is now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia: the Planters and the Loyalists. Both were mainly from New England, and they brought their Thanksgiving customs with them along with their architecture. New England Planters began settling the region in the 1760s, around the Sackville area and elsewhere. The Loyalists followed after the American Revolution, and their arrival in 1783-84 helped found the province itself. The Loyalist refugees encouraged the wider spread of Thanksgiving observance, since New Englanders already had a Thanksgiving tradition.
So the honest answer is that Thanksgiving-style observances likely took root in New Brunswick during the 1760s to 1780s, carried by settlers. I couldn’t find a specific recorded date or event for the very first one. If you’re researching this seriously, the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick would be the best place to look for early proclamations and church records.
A Quirk of the Calendar
Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday across most of the country, but not in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia. Many New Brunswickers still gather for turkey, squash, and pie, even if their workplaces don’t always close.
Whether your table has a full turkey dinner or just a few friends and a pie, here’s to giving thanks. 🍁
