E105 – Canadian Thanksgiving

Have you ever noticed that a simple information search can lead you in strange and wonderful directions?  As in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, historical research can lead you down a winding rabbit hole that might take you off your original path and lead you to new and amazing historical places!

This podcast series starts with that premise!

Adrian Petry, Visitors Services Coordinator and Kathleen Powell, Supervisor of Historical Services and Curator, both from the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, have challenged each other to explore the weird and wonderful places that one hour of research on a topic will take them.  Join them as they share their findings!

On this episode…

Enjoy this commercial-free episode with Kathleen and Adrian recalling their research on Canadian Thanksgiving and ending up in a bunch of different places including Raggamuffin Parades, the Order of Good Cheer (L’Ordre de Bon Temps), and the Caribou Shot. Join them on this wild ride filled with tangential sidebars and get ready for your own Thankgiving weekend. Gobble, gobble!

Listen:

Footnotes: 

1 – Caribou (or shot of Caribou) is of Quebecois origin (not Michigan as Adrian incorrectly guessed).

2 – After recording, Kathleen found this neat source promoting a day of Thanksgiving to commemorate the end of a Cholera outbreak in 1834.  Source:  The John A. MacDonald Album, Lena Newman, Tundra Books, Montreal, QC, 1974. (p. 27)