Canadian Thanksgiving – the Traditional Wokadoo

A Really Brief History: Canadian Thanksgiving is a stat holiday that is now observed on the second Monday of October. The first official Thanksgiving was celebrated on November 6, 1879, but long before that the First Nations celebrated fall harvest – even before the early French settlers initiated such an event in 1578.

You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, ‘Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.’
– Dylan Brody –

Family Traditions: Our family cooks a Wokadoo (turkey). Many, many years ago our very young nephew christened all such birds in the oven ‘Wokadoos’. He couldn’t remember the word ‘turkey’ but he had a general idea of what sound a turkey made, (though he was actually thinking of a rooster.) The closest he could get to saying “Cock-a-doodle-doo” was ‘wokadoo’ and from then on, all my turkeys were referred to as wokadoos.

For the past few years, most of our family feast days have taken place at one of our children’s homes – the passing of the turkey baster, you might say. I don’t mind. Our home was turkey central for over forty years.

Thanksgiving: when the people who are the most thankful are the ones who didn’t have to cook.
— Melanie White –

This year, a Son-in-Law (the one with a smoker large enough to accomodate a turkey)  cooked an excellent bird. After dinner, when we traditionally take turns talking about what we are thankful for, the Daughter introduced a twist on the theme. She gave each of us a LEGO kit and tasked us with building what we are thankful for.

This is the kit we each got – and this is what I built the next day after I sort of followed the instruction manual. These critters are very different than the ‘thankful things’ we built the evening before!

These are my Thankful things. Can you guess which ones represent family, friends, nature, a roof over our head?

This is The Car Guys ‘Thankful things’. More people, home, nature but also  the answer to the question ‘how high can you build before it falls over’.

What are your Thanksgiving Traditions?

Hungry for more quotations? Thanksgiving and Turkey Quotations