About Belleville's East Hill

I'm pleased to announce the new Quinte Real Estate Iphone app.

It's available for free, click the link and download it if you happen to have an iphone and are interested in real estate in the Quinte area. At present, this link is the only place where it can be downloaded, but it will be available through your regular app outlets shortly.

If you have a blackberry or Android phone, stay tuned, you will be able to download one for your phones shortly.

If you are interested in buying or selling real estate in the Quinte market, then this app might be a very handy thing to have on your phone.

I will be upgrading the app's capabilities within the next couple of weeks, so if anyone has suggestions on how to improve it, just let me know, and if it's a good idea and it's feasible, it will be done.

This app is a great way to have all the Quinte real estate information you need crammed into one little icon on your smartphone. Part of the challenge we face in this day and age is compressing the vast amount of information we are exposed to into tidy little corners.

Besides, who can resist having my smiling face peering out at them from their phone screen?

Since 1957, Thanksgiving in Canada (Jour de l'Action de grâce) has been celebrated on the second Monday in October (the same day Americans celebrate Columbus Day). Canada has always celebrated Thanksgiving earlier, but in 1957 the Canadian Parliament declared that the second Monday in October would be recognized as;

“A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed.’’

Why do the two countries celebrate on different days? There's a couple of reasons really.

You might already have guessed the first reason, it makes logical sense. Canada (for the most part) is further north, and therefore has a shorter growing season, and the harvest has to come in quite a bit earlier than it does in most of the U.S., so therefore it makes sense to celebrate the harvest earlier as well. Much of Canada is already experiencing winter weather right now, and a harvest festival wouldn't be a very cheery occasion at the moment.

The second reason is also pretty obvious (now that I'm going to mention it). Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving are not celebrations of the same thing. In general they are pretty similar in that they are both harvest festivals with their origins in Europe, however, specifically, American Thanksgiving, as well as giving thanks for the bountiful harvest is also a commemoration of the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation. This was a feast shared by the pilgrims and native Americans. Canadians do not commemorate this event.

The first Thanksgiving in Canada occured in 1578 when the explorer Martin Frobisher, after successfully arriving in Baffin Island after a particularly gruelling crossing in search of the elusive North West Passage, held a ceremony in what is now known as Frobisher Bay. He and his crew celebrated communion and gave thanks to God for their safe landing (and I'm certain they prayed very hard to be returned safely to the comforts of Europe). In later years settlers came to this country and brought with them their traditions from their home countries. A harvest festival is a universal custom, and I'm sure that just about every culture celebrates this event. I'm also sure a lot of our traditions have been pinched from American traditions as well.

In any event, everybody on this continent has many reasons to be thankful all year round, so setting one day aside to express this thanks isn't really asking a lot.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011.