What was the first Thanksgiving like?

What's the story of the first Canadian Thanksgiving?

• When did the Canadian Pilgrims first celebrate Thanksgiving with the Natives with Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, and Pumpkin Pie? Did the Americans simply rip off the holiday from the Canadians, which is why Canadian Thanksgiving is earlier than the American one?

• Answer:

  Thanksgiving was traditionally celebrated to give thanks for a good harvest at the end of the farming season. Early settlers would go into the fields and bring in the final batch of crops before the chance of the first frost. Since Canada is further north than USA, we get the frost much earlier than Americans, which is why Canadian Thanskgiving is actually a month earlier, in October. Canadians did not really have pilgrims. A "Pilgrim" was traditionally the group that came from Europe and settled in the area around Plymouth. Massachusetts. They were a religious group at odds with the Church of England, and fled first from England to Amsterdam, and then decided to leave to the new world, as it offered missionary work and the ability to recruit new members to their faith. Many of Canada's settlers were either French explorers and fur-traders, or English colonists trying to escape the famine and poverty of Ireland, Scotland, and Britain. The attached video minutes from Canada's Histori website may be of interest to see.