Whose Holiday Is It: Tracing Roots of Thanksgiving Traditions

Reflections · Oct 8, 2026 · 28m

Thanksgiving in Canada has a checkered history, so Joeita Gupta set out on a mission to learn more about it.

She spoke with Peter Stevens, a Professor of Liberal Studies at Humber Polytechnic. Peter talks about the religious histories of the widely celebrated holiday, and describes how settlers wrote Indigenous peoples out of the story of Thanksgiving in the early 1800s.

Brian Rice offers insight into the Indigenous history of the holiday. Brian is an Indigenous Land Based Educator at the University of Manitoba and is of Mohawk descent. He shares how the origins of Thanksgiving can be traced…