Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, home made buns and pumpkin pie topped with ice cream. If you’re salivating and thinking Thanksgiving, you’re exactly right. These are the perfect ingredients for your typical Canadian Thanksgiving dinner – and no, we didn’t copy the celebration from our cousins in the United States. It’s our very own.

Since 1957, every second Monday of every October has marked the traditional harvest festival and this tradition dates back to 1578 when (here’s a little known fact) English seaman, Sir Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean, celebrated by giving thanks for surviving the long journey.

But it’d be foolish to think that Canadians and Americans are the only ones to give thanks around this time of year.

Thanksgiving is celebrated in other countries with various other names such as Harvest Festival, August Moon Festival and Tree of Life and with many themes to acknowledge different religions, nature or a bountiful harvest season; so with such a large multicultural population in Vancouver, the Thanksgiving meal could include just about anything.

 In Africa, the festival is of a religious nature accompanied with dancing and music. Dancers wear masks and each dance tells a story such as a good ghost who looks after the crops and scares away the bad ghosts who try to spoil the food.

“A large number of customers will eat the Canadian meal on one of the 3 weekend days and then will come in to my restaurant to dine on my country’s cuisine,” says Ainealem Abraha, owner of the Red Sea Café on East Broadway; a restaurant that specializes in Ethiopian cuisine.

Abraha says his restaurant doesn’t serve the traditional Canadian Thanksgiving meal. And why should it? Instead he serves mouth watering meat or vegetables on a spongy crepe-like bread (called injera) eaten by hand or with utensils. Your choice.

“Often times my regular customers will bring out of town visitors to dine in my specialty restaurant,” says Abraha. And as for celebrating Thanksgiving at home, he says things are no different. “We stick to our home country meal.”

 In Greece, every autumn is met by worshiping Demeter, the goddess of all grains. The festival of Thesmosphoria was held in the hopes that Demeter’s gratitude would grant them a good harvest.

At Kerkis, a Greek restaurant in Kitsilano, Julia Bonofas and her husband Bob say their restaurant is busy on Thanksgiving weekends. Customers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds love to come in and eat their favourite Greek food from the strictly ‘Greek only’ menu. Favourites include lasagna, linguini, hot appetizers (such as calamari), and, of course, souvlaki.

But unlike Abraha whose Ethiopian restaurant is a mere extension of the food he serves on Thanksgiving at his house, Bonofas takes on a more local approach while celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving.

“We go all out and have our turkey and vegetables,” says Bonofas with a laugh.

Going back down south, Mexico’s tradition is called The Tree of Life festival. The belief is that the spirit of trees can be captured by making use of bark and branches. Bark paper is made and turned into magic dolls along with harvest scenes painted on bark paper.

Los Guerreros Latin Food Products is a grocery store at Kingsway and Joyce in Vancouver. They specialize in Mexican and Latin American food supplies. Liney Zavaleta along with her husband Rolando and daughter Linet have operated their store for the past 20 years.

Linet Zavaleta - Photo by Ric Moore

“Quite a number of different nationalities will come to our store,” says Zavaleta. “They come with Mexican recipes in their hands to purchase supplies to make that special Latin American meal.”

She adds that their store doesn’t sell Thanksgiving supplies such as meat and turkey. But that doesn’t mean that the Canadian Thanksgiving meal isn’t being jazzed up by their customers.

“[They] will come…and purchase a special package of spices, leaves and an assortment of nuts to be added to tomato sauce or wine to make sauce for the turkey,” says Zavaleta.

Thanksgiving for the Zavaleta family isn’t all that unusual. They like to mix up traditions and spice up their Thanksgiving dinner.

“We have turkey, vegetables, rice or potatoes and home-made cakes like the ones we sell in our store,” she says adding that they have their store specialty sauce, cause after all, we have to have the turkey sauce.”

So, let’s all be thankful that even though Canadian Thanksgiving is steeped in traditions dating back to the 1500s, that the changes new Canadians are making to it don’t take on a darker tone like in the U.S. where the day following their traditional Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday” – the unofficial starting of getting all those “Christmas deals.”

As Bonofas’ daughter, Rania says about the difference in festivities, “In Greece, one festival will have one [Greek] theme and in Canada, there are so many themes for the same [traditional] festival.”