Thanksgiving is a chance to pause and give thanks for who and what we value most. It’s a chance to give thanks for our country — for the rights, freedoms, and opportunities we enjoy because we are Canadian. Happy Thanksgiving, Canada. My statement:

Thanksgiving Day, my first year abroad. The campus was a ghost town. All restaurants were shuttered. I had no family within six thousand miles. I was doing laundry at a desolate laundromat on a freezing evening, surviving on instant noodles. An elderly Black veteran was sitting three seats down, watching clothes tumble in a giant dryer, listening to Motown on a radio. He got up, unzipped an insulated lunch bag, pulled out a massive Tupperware container packed with roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato mash, and handed me a plastic fork. I shook my head, embarrassed: 'Sir, that's your holiday dinner. I can't.' The old man frowned, sat right next to me, cracked open the container, and shoved a forkful of turkey into my hand. 'Son,' he said with absolute moral authority, 'it is against federal regulations to eat cold noodles on Thanksgiving when there is warm bird in the room. Now eat before I get offended.' We sat together on plastic yellow chairs listening to the rinse cycle, passing the cranberry sauce back and forth like family.