Stevie Szabad, Author

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to my fellow Canadians! Oh, it will be a real one this year, again, finally. Yes, this year, a real turkey dinner on the Sunday of the weekend, with family members invited over to partake.

 But that hasn’t always been the case in my over-60 years of living, and not only because of interruptions like, say, a pandemic. I’m a military family member, born, raised, and retired. This meant, for me, that holidays were when you could fit them in. So regardless of your version of Thanksgiving this year, or when or with whom you get to enjoy it, Happy Day to you all!

For those who haven’t had the chance to check it out, my book, “First We Eat. Food, Life, and More Stories” is full of anecdotes and fun short stories taken from my army brat and Air Force wife life. Here’s an excerpt:

“Another example of disregarding dates to celebrate a holiday: American Thanksgiving, or as we call it, Football Day. Both my sons lived in the United States, gone for the same four years, one for two years of high school and college, the other for the full college experience. As Canadians, my husband and I would always take the Canadian long weekend in early October away from work to visit one or the other son, it not being a holiday weekend yet down south because American Thanksgiving fell in late November. Something about the earlier harvest schedule in Canada, I would assume, accounts for the difference in the country’s dates of celebration. Regardless, my boys would not get turkey on Canadian Thanksgiving; in the middle of their school and hockey schedules, we’d be lucky to enjoy one Saturday night meal at a restaurant together. But on American Thanksgiving, which for them was a longer four-day weekend, and which my husband and I didn’t get off work, they were stuck down there observing with their American peers. And as pathetic, lonely foreign hockey players, they would always be invited by a school friend’s nearby family to partake in American Thanksgiving celebrations. Now, I cannot relate their experiences participating in this iconic American holiday event, but I can tell you it affected my boys considerably. To this day they will take the Thursday and sometimes also the Friday after off from work here in Canada as personal vacation days. D’Arcy hosts a huge football party, my daughter-in-law Jessica decorates the house in American football colours, and everyone wears their NFL jerseys. The table is loaded with snacks and a cooked turkey ready to make bun sandwiches, tailgate-style. Once they even had a “turducken” (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken), which we had to cross the nearby border into upstate New York to find in a grocery store. I admit I didn’t enjoy it; the shredded meat was so over-salted, it burned the tongue.”

More Stories? Check out Books