MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hey, Steve, you know, it's even quieter down here at the studio than usual because it's Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day. You know, President Biden issued a proclamation a few years ago that this day can be celebrated as both. But did you know that for our northern neighbors, it is Thanksgiving?
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
I have heard that, and I'm sure that our Canadian colleagues would take any chance to make sure that we know it. They celebrate before America celebrates its Thanksgiving because, we're told, of the long northern winter, meaning you have an earlier harvest season.
MARTIN: But I'm seeing that like other holidays, the meaning has changed over time.
PETER STEVENS: Historically, it was a big religious occasion.
MARTIN: A religious occasion says Peter Stevens, a Canadian historian at Humber College in Toronto.
STEVENS: Everyone would go to church and hear these sermons that were not your typical church sermon but were sort of half religion and half sort of nation building.
MARTIN: Images of the harvest were historically used as symbols of national abundance. But it won't surprise you to know that the Indigenous people whose lands were taken were not included in these Canadian sermons.
KEVIN WHITE: The stories are just as murky here in Canada as they are in the United States in terms of how Thanksgiving began between settlers and Indigenous peoples.
INSKEEP: Kevin White is an Indigenous scholar at the University of Toronto and a member of the Mohawk nation. And he says Indigenous people taught settlers how to hunt, how to fish, how to farm.
WHITE: The newcomers were not prepared for this new world. And Indigenous people helped them and showed them, you know, these are safe to eat. These aren't safe to eat. There's a lot of layering to this.
INSKEEP: White says Indigenous communities across North America have a tradition of giving thanks that goes back to before contact with settlers.
WHITE: For example, we as Mohawks and Senecas and Haudenosaunee - or Iroquois - people have a Thanksgiving address that we basically enact daily but acknowledges all of the natural world and its bounty that provides for our existence and what we call a good mind or a contented mind.
MARTIN: Today, Canadians as a nation have different Thanksgiving traditions than in the U.S. Instead of watching American football, Peter Stevens says Canadians like to contemplate fall foliage.
STEVENS: You drive, and you see the fall leaves. And maybe you stop in at a winery, and then you pop in and get a flavor for the local pastries and some butter tarts and things like that.
INSKEEP: Canadians apparently love butter pies. Think pecan pie minus the pecans or Nanaimo bars.
STEVENS: So you've got sort of a base that's got some chocolate and coconut in it. And then the middle layer is this kind of creamy yellow color that's quite sweet. And then there's sort of a layer of chocolate on top of that.
INSKEEP: I did not see the coconut coming, Michel, but part of the classic Thanksgiving turkey dinner that Canadians do enjoy. It is part of that along with mashed potatoes and gravy and beans and that sort of thing.
MARTIN: Well, there's always room for more chocolate, right?
INSKEEP: (Laughter) There's always room for more chocolate.
MARTIN: Always room for more chocolate.
INSKEEP: I like the description of being half religious, half nation building. In America, of course, it's half religious, half nation building, half football, half commercials.
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