Can You Smell It?

By Carol Roach
winterose@videotron.ca

Living in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. I am told we do not celebrate it with quite the same enthusiasm as our American neighbours. We give thanks to our lord for the bounty he has bestowed upon us. And we remember the first settlers to Canada and the hardships they must have endured braving the cold Canadian winters. We remember the story of Jacques Cartier who in 1535, came up the Shores of La Riviere St Laurent (St. Lawrence River) to establish the first settlement for New France at Stadacona.

Stadacona was the native name for his village settlement. Later that named changed to Quebec City, the capital city of the province of Quebec which is the province in which I live. Many of his men died from scurvy before they had even reached our shores.

If it weren’t for the natives as was the case with the settlers in America, Cartier and the remainder of his men would have perished. The natives introduced maize (corn) and other supplements to the European diet, and taught the men how to survive the cruel elements. Later, they taught the settlers how to hunt, fish, and farm.
First the fur trappers came over for the lucrative trade in beaver pelts, and then “Les Femmes Favorise”, the elegant French ladies from France who were to wed the trappers and create a new life and new family in this brave new world.

But after all is said and done, I can bet that if I went out on the street and asked anyone the question, “who were the first people to celebrate Thanksgiving,” the majority would say the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, coming over on the Mayflower.

Do we have our histories mixed up – yes, but is it because we were not taught our own history in school – no. It is because America takes more pride in that part of her heritage. The pilgrim story is reenacted in plays all over the country. The Internet is bombarded with jokes and poems and information galore. The day is also known as turkey day to many and nobody has to question what that means, it is a given.

Thanksgiving day in Canada is a national holiday. But you see I work for an American company as a customer service representative, in its only Canadian call center. For me my Thanksgiving was just another day to work. Though I was given a different day off to compensate for working on Thanksgiving Day, needless to say I did not have a turkey dinner. As a matter of fact I worked until 9pm and didn’t have much of a supper at all.

When it came time for the American Thanksgiving, I thought for sure that I would have the day off. But much to my chagrin, I found out that we were working. As stated before, we are the only Canadian call center, for my company. The American call centers in Omaha, NE, and Houston, TX, were running on skeleton staff of course.
To ease our disappointment, the company maintained they did not anticipate many calls and that we would have a very light day. Such was the case and we laughed and joked around most of the day. We wondered why Americans would take time from their special day with family and friends to bother calling in to say they wanted to order a movie pass, or to cancel their membership. On the other hand, we had many clients telling us how sorry they were that we had to work on Thanksgiving while everyone else had it off.

If anything, we are a great group of people and we laughed and joked all day long. There were jokes like “do you know the Americans call Thanksgiving turkey day” and the retort being “well it sure isn’t turkey day for me, I have my tuna fish sandwich right here.” Michael asked “I wonder if I ordered a special turkey pizza would they make it.” And Samira replied, yeah if you ordered it from the states.”

As the day wore on, we of course grew hungrier. However, the strangest thing occurred. The call center started smelling like food. Since the company cafeteria is far enough away, the aroma of food never reaches us. Yet today, November 28, 2002, the call center smelled of food. How could that be? Charles having the wisdom of Solomon, and the humor of Seinfeld, retorted “it’s the Americans cooking their turkeys that we smell. They weren’t about to leave us out on their biggest day of the year.”

The real explanation for the smell of food in the call center was never determined, but for this little group of Canadians who never got to eat turkey on either the American or Canadian Thanksgiving day, in our minds on the American Thanksgiving, we sure could smell it.