Thanksgiving in Canada, Columbus Day in the US. They both fall within the same week. Although Canada recorded the first Protestant ‘Day of Thanks’ in the 1500s, decades ahead of the Mayflower landing, Thanksgiving in Canada attained its earlier date due to being further North, hence an earlier Autumn harvest; the primary reason for Canada’s similarity to American Thanksgiving is due to the surge of Loyalists pouring into Canada after the American Revolutionary War. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the spirit of the popular holiday continues across North America wearing the type of colonial settler fantasy depicted in this painting by American artist  Jean Leon Gerome Ferris depicting the first US Thanksgiving. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) One of the unseemly threads of similarity is, of course, the Indigenous connection. Industrial Schools in the US, Residential Schools in Canada. Both countries have a long history of slow genocide, but for some reason...