The origin of American Thanksgiving

After yesterday’s post, a lot of you* asked me if I was serious about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade starting in Ottawa and making its way down to New-York via Montréal. Of course I was serious.

I even dug up some video evidence.

Let me point out a few things about this video for the few of you not versed in Canadiana:

• 00:00 – The hunters are making sure the bears are kept at bay for the duration of the parade.
• 00:10 – The first float rolls in. You start hearing the Thanksgiving Day Anthem.
• 00:17 – You can see the magnificent float with the lights on. Looks like it’s a good one this year!
• 00:21 – The Anthem is sung by the Canadian Winter Olympic team. They paired the reveal of their Olympic gear with Thanksgiving.
• 00:27 – That’s Denise. She’s pregnant so her presence in the skeleton event is doubtful, but she was still included in the video. We’re a friendly nation.
• 00:36 - You can see a beautiful panning shot of downtown Ottawa.
• 00:49 – You can see all the Ottawa people gathering around the float. Here’s a confession: Those are not all people living in Ottawa! Just for the video, extras from Gatineau, Aylmer and Buckingham were hired. we really wanted to make this “larger than life”.
• 01:15 – You can see the Rideau Canal right there. Longest natural skating surface in the World!
• 01:50 – Another confession: This guy is not really the Prime Minister of Canada – you knew Ottawa is the capital of Canada, right? The PM was on a diplomatic visit in Northern Québec when the video was shot. But that guy is a fairly decent look-alike (he’s actually Ottawa’s baker from La Boulangerie Française,  hence the France colors on his sash).
• 01:58 –  Some crowdsnowmobilling. Very popular up here.
• 02:38 – We just got lucky here. The snow was totally not planned – but it snowed anyways! We were a little worried because it hadn’t snowed in three days at that point!
• 02:53 – Shot of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, located at Ottawa’s intersection.
• 02:56 – Our PM’s dog – Mister Timmy.

There you have it, video evidence the genesis of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We do all of this for you, American friends.

You’re welcome.

* I might have a different definition of “a lot”.