Foods traditionally served at Thanksgiving include roasted turkey, roast beef, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet corn, various autumn vegetables (including various kinds of squashes, but also Brussels sprouts), pumpkin pie, apple pie, and glazed yams.

Various regional dishes and desserts may also be served, including salmon, wild game, Jiggs dinner with split-pea pudding, butter tarts, and Nanaimo bars.

For example, the Markham Fair is an annual agricultural and harvest festival held during the weekend before Thanksgiving,[16] Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest holds an annual parade consisting of floats, civic figures in the region, local performance troupes and marching bands,[17] and Fort Langley holds a widely attended neighbourhood festival celebrating the cranberry harvest, in which local crafts, produce, and artisan goods are sold.

[18] According to some historians, the first celebration of Thanksgiving in North America occurred in 1579 after the safe landing of Martin Frobisher's fleet in Newfoundland[19] after an unsuccessful attempt in search of the Northwest Passage.

[5] His third voyage, to the Frobisher Bay area of Baffin Island in the present Canadian territory of Nunavut, set out with the intention of starting a small settlement.

The expedition was plagued by ice and freak storms, which at times scattered the fleet; on meeting again at their anchorage in Frobisher Bay, "... Mayster Wolfall, a learned man, appointed by Her Majesty's Counsel to be their minister and preacher, made unto them a godly sermon, exhorting them especially to be thankful to God for their strange and miraculous deliverance in those so dangerous places ...".

[21][22]) Years later, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, from 1604, also held feasts of thanks.

[26] The first Thanksgiving Day after Confederation was observed as a civic holiday on April 5, 1872, to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from a serious illness.