Canadian Thanksgiving, Australian style
It’s the rituals and traditions that make celebrations stand out from the everyday. I can’t imagine Christmas without the carols, or Easter without the eggs. 
But with Canadian Thanksgiving we were stumped. We knew it didn’t involve the pilgrims but we were certain it still had something to do with pumpkin pie.We began planning for an orphan Thanksgiving by booking two cabins in Tofino for the long weekend. Little did we realise we had unintentionally arranged to participate in one of Vancouver’s greatest holiday traditions, queuing for the ferry.
Whilst voyaging across the strait of Georgia, I began my newest ritual, of talking up Coombs. Well, actually I probably began a little earlier than that, singing “Goats on the Roof, Goats on the Roof” on our way to Horseshoe Bay. (Think “The Bonnie Doon song” but a little less tuneful). Coombs doesn’t appear on many lists of top 10 places to see in the world, or even in Canada, possibly not even in British Columbia. I simply don’t know why. It is the most hilarious place I have ever seen. It seems like an ordinary country town. OK, it has a bird sanctuary, oh and a butterfly farm, but nothing exceptional. That is, until you reach the pink concrete castle, complete with crooked turret. And then the weirdness begins. Between the castle and the half boat,also concrete, stands a square filled with carved statues of Buddha, but also of giraffes, dogs and elephants. In a corner, sits half a car, presumably just for photo opportunities. Surrounding this square, are multiple shops filled with sarongs and bathers, despite the absence of either the climate or the water to swim in.
But that’s not all. If you can drag yourself away from Sculpture square, you come to “Goats on the Roof”. What on earth? Well, there are goats. They live on the roof. Despite having been there three times now, I can’t really expand on that. But somewhere in the distant past, someone must have decided that the low and fairly flat roof on the market was an opportunity not to be wasted. They planted the roof with grass, added some goats and hey presto, a tourist attraction was born.
The most bizarre thing about this place though is that once you’ve finished with the hokey tourist gawking, you go into the marketplace. And there, under the cover of a thousand Indian lampshades, you find the most amazing collection of gourmet food. From oven-warm bread, to cheeses imported from Europe, to fresh chanterelle mushrooms, to venison chorizo and dark, dark chocolate. We brought all this and more and planned a true Thanksgiving feast.
Unencumbered by tradition, it was truly an expat affair. Firstly, we held it on Saturday night, as we had plans for Sunday and Monday. We had chicken rather than turkey, deemed too hard to cook. And we had Branston pickle, instead of Cranberry sauce. Actually I think we can blame that on our delightful Scot who doesn’t like cooking and will happily eat pickle on toast for dinner. Not only did we not eat Pumpkin pie, but we did not even get as far as the planned chocolate pots for dessert. ‘Goats on the roof’ had a cheese festival on and we somehow ended up with almost a wedge of exotic cheese for each of the nine of us staying. Oh, the dreams we had that night.
The rest of our weekend was much more Canadian. We bought hats with ear flaps and we hiked in the rain. We admired old growth forest, and we talked earnestly about the environment. We might have watched the ice hockey, if we’d had a TV. But we didn’t, so we played a trivia game which our orphan from Ontario won hands down. We ate crab, caught that day, and leftover cheese. We even drank wine from the Okanagan instead of New Zealand. And for our thanksgiving, we gave thanks, for new friends, and for the country in which we met.
Tags: Canada, Expat life, Travel
