
Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
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My husband just informed me that the Canadian football field is 20 yards longer and it's wider, too. I never knew any other country had a football league! As an American who is not in the least interested in football (I may as well be living in Canada...or Europe!), I don't know why I find this fascinating. LOL. But it was interesting to learn about Canada and their Thanksgiving holiday. Very nice. On a side note, I read the comments about 'Indigenous Day' and that makes me sad. Why couldn't we have kept Columbus Day and made a day just for the Native Americans? It could be a day in which the Native Americans tribes could jointly have picked out; instead, it was our inane and foolish government entity that made that stupid decision. (Sorry, done with the ranting now).
I'm Canadian and have a lot of family members who live in the US. I've been to 42 states. In my travels I've been surprised by the amount of Americans lack of knowledge about their northern neighbours so don't feel bad. I believe at least a couple of factors can be attributed. While I don't watch the mainstream news anymore, I used to see a big difference between American news vs Canadian news. The American news only reported on stories about the US or American's outside of the US. Canadian news reported on international news and politics as well as sports. My cousins moved to California when they were enrolling into Grades 7, 9 and 11. All three of them said they were only taught American history and geography and basically nothing about the rest of the world. Here in Canada it's the opposite to a fault as our students are taught more about the history of other countries than our own country.
We don't have a holiday similar to your Columbus Day. We have Canada Day (previously called Dominion Day) on July 1 to celebrate the agreement of our three British colonies to join together to become Canada. If you enjoy history look up the war of 1812 when "Canada" burned the White House.
We also have Victoria Day in May, one week before your Memorial Day although most people just call it "May long" It was originally started to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday. Instead of changing the date with each reining Monarch it's always celebrated the end of May.
This year on September 30 was our very first "Truth and Reconciliation Day" for Canada's Indigenous people. Canada made international news this past spring when hundreds of unmarked graves were located near various Residential Schools here in Western Canada. Residential schools operated in Canada from the 1870's-1996. At first they were opened simply so Indigenous children could learn to read and write. Later on they were built across Canada and parents were ordered to send their children hundreds of miles away to these schools where they were forced to cut off their hair, wear different clothing, prohibited from speaking their own languages, forced to practice a different religion as well as prohibited from even talking to their own siblings. Many of these children were beaten, sexually abused, overworked, underfed, and even murdered etc. When they died from illness or disease the only way the parents could get their children's body back home for burial was if they paid for it to be shipped by train. Most of them couldn't afford it so their children were buried in the school graveyard. While these graves were marked at one time, the records that were kept have mostly been lost or destroyed. Our governments, especially the Liberals lead by Pierre Elliott Trudeau who was Prime Minister from 1968-1984. While previously the Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United churches helped run these schools they were solely ran by the government after 1968.
So while Justin Trudeau, Pierre's son, would like everyone to think he's a hero for passing this day of observance through, in reality he's very disingenuous. Instead of attending even one of the three different ceremonies in British Columbia where he was invited by their Chiefs, he just flew right over them in his private jet from Ottawa on his way to his $4.5 million ocean front home on Vancouver Island where he went surfing for the day. See how that works? The government makes a "holiday" for these people because of 125 years of abuse, rapes, murders, crimes and injustices that these people faced from the government and the Prime Minister doesn't even have the grace to even reply to their invitations to the ceremonies of the very first Day of Truth and Reconciliation! The only people in Canada who received a paid day off were federal employees.
A couple of weeks later there was a news conference where one of the Chiefs confronted him and told him how disappointed and sad her and her people were that he didn't respond to their invitations. He arrogantly looked in the opposite direction during her speech then as he always does after he gets caught, gave a dramatic insincere "apology"
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html
We do indeed have football. It's called the CFL. After the playoffs the winner from the Western division plays against the winner of the Eastern division for the Grey Cup. Each year the game takes place in a pre-determined city. This year it will be in Hamilton, Ontario on December 12. Many years the Grey Cup's been played in blizzards or in temperatures as low as -40 F. Many of the players are from the US. I'm with you on football! LoL. They seem to do more standing around than playing. I prefer hockey as probably 80%+ of other Canadians. I hope you've enjoyed my little history lesson as much as I enjoyed writing it eh?! š šØš¦
Indigenous Day celebrates the native american people that were here long before the europeans came and before they were forced from there land and way of life. Then brutally murdered or infested with disease. Columbus day just celebrated a drunk rapest lunatic that was banned from his home country, then convinced another country to fund his exploration and exploitation of new lands. Colombus didnt even discover north america, He rediscovered the caribean islands which were already occupied. then he set up horrendace slave, rape, spice and liquor trades between the islands, africa and europe. Why do we even pretend to care about him and continue to teach fake stories in the american school systems? Plymouth rock? he never came anywhere near new england, so why pretend he discovered or settled here?
Thanksgiving still starts with a church service for many Americans.
I remember living in Maine we always knew when Canadian Thanksgiving was because all the motels around would be full up with Canadians who were here for their Holiday and to shop.
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