Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I have heard that Canada is far more materialistic than the UK.
Having always been someone who refuses to follow the crowd :mad: , will this cause any problems. :confused:

My main interest is in business, I have never purchased flashy vehicles as I never wanted to standout, just blend in. :cool:

The vehicles I chose would look like an average representatives car, ford mondeo or volkswagon passat.

If I choose something based on requirements, being practical and in abundance such as a minivan & used it for business, would this have an adverse effect in your opinion? :scared:

My business is in agriculture, where a great deal of customers appear to drive huge! trucks with V8 engines. (I dont feel these are practical for me as I will do a great deal of travelling on the highway.
As for the local area's, the farm roads all appear in very good condition.

I would like to use a nice 4 wheel drive :cool: , but due to the expected 100K kilometers per year that I expect to do, it doesnt make financial sense. :(

should I focus on being practical or image for success in sales ?
Also what vehicles do sales representatives use in Canada?

looking forward to your comments

P & S

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Just to put this into context for people who might want to respond, you're moving to Ontario, right?

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

A fortnight ago I tried to go to a local farm, not in the middle of nowhere but, fifty miles from downtown Toronto. I was in an ordinary car. I got stuck in the snow. A week ago I tried again in a gay 4x4 (a Honda Element), I got there but it was touch and go. I don't think it would be practical to try and visit farms on a regular basis in a car; you need something with ground clearance and probably four wheel drive.

There's also the question of image, one of my customers said to me, quite honestly "you know I'm a liberal, I drive an import truck". If you have an English accent you're already at risk of being considered effeminate and a pinko. Driving a car, especially God forbid, a European car, can only make matters worse. What you need is a King Ranch F150, ideally last years model with a couple of dents, so as not to look too rich. If the price of gas is a problem look at the diesel.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I was going to say ....... here in Calgary, nobody seems to care what you wear, what you drive, what you eat ..... you just do your own thing, and tolerance is the order of the day.

Hubby saw a guy walking through TD mall one day with a pyramid on his head. It didn't even raise an eye-brow! He asked a co-worker what that was about, and she said she supposed it was something to do with channelling energy ..... :D

ps: having said that ..... Everybody laughs at Smart Cars! :p

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I doubt a farm rep's customers are going to a be a rainbow collage of diversity; Weebo Ludvig is the most famous Albertan farmer.

It seems to me that farmers in Ontario come in three flavours; Mennonites, rednecks and francophone rednecks, none of whom strike me as being tolerant of people unlike them.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

No, I daresay you are right.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

and step about 15kms out side the city limits and Albertas rednecks will make Ontario's look like gay liberals in their level of tolerance

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

yes

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Only a gay liberal government lackey would express distance in kilometers. That'd cost a sale even in King City, never mind the boonies.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Thanks for the useful info

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

mea culpa .... I didn't read the original post in proper detail .... it was just the "keeping up with the Jones's" phrase that set me off, and my remarks were limited to Calgary city life, yes. :D

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

My impression is that the UK is now far more of a consumer and superficial society than Canada. Here you have the space to do your own thing and there isn't the same class system which defines the pecking order.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I understand that Mennonites are protective of their culture, but where do rednecks come from? I thought Canada recently celebrated a 100 years of history meaning most citizens are immigrants?
Is this not the case?
:confused:

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Not necessarily true at all! My family had several mennonites as friends while I was growing up in the KW area!

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Doesn't that support my contention ?

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Thanks for that, It makes me feel a little better :)

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

How - when you said that mennonites dont associate with people outside their "own" and yet they certainly did with us and we arent mennonites!

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Rednecks would, I suppose, say they come from here, though they'll be of European ancestry. Most people in Toronto are immigrants but not in rural areas, it's another world out past Major Mac. Farmers may be the children of immigrants but are likely longer established than that.

If there was a centennial celebation it passed me by but Canada has been established for about as long as the US, surely you don't say there are no rednecks there.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Oh. It supports my contention that there are Mennonite farmers, not that they're insular. Nonetheless, I do think they're insular. I go to the horse auctions in Waterloo and, as the only person in the arena wearing a zipper, I feel like I've fallen from Mars. I don't think one can say that any community based on religion is receptive to people who are not of that religion, did you try selling anything to Mennonites ?

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

my impression is that the cities here are just as superficial as the cities in Europe... although get outside of the major three (T.O Van Calgary) they are a little less than some of there equivalents in the UK,
What I think people see is not so much a difference in materialism, but a difference in current fashion… with Canada being about 2-3yeras behind Europe… its looks like they don’t care when compared to Europe… but they do care and in the same way, but when compared to other N.A cities and the current standards in fashion that are place here…. Just go look how many ipod’s are out on the street and accessories to go with it..
The concept of shallow consumerism was invented just south of us, and it reached here long before it ever got to Europe

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Mennonites aside, Ontario farmers are renowned for their erudition and sophistication. They normally drive Range Rovers around the back forty while listening to Rachmaninov and Chopin CD's. They also drive Smart Cars to go shopping. They only put on the plaid shirts and baseball caps on Sundays when they get out the beaten up F-150 for the tourists like dbd33 who are timidly venturing north of the 401 to experience the countryside. This is 100% FACT.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Ditto. They just lust after different things here. Burberry anyone?!?!?! :D

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

That's the first time I've seen those three cited as Canada's major cities.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Dont quote me on 100 years, it may be 120. I saw something in the paper when in Canada last year.
When researching the market, the reaction of the local communities did concern me a little. However after visiting 15 odd farms, I found most were immigrants or descendants of dutch immigrants, which is where I came to the conclusion that, they are not far off immigrants.
This is why I found the description rednecks suprising?
Mind you, I do look like a red indian who has been scalped.! :D

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Mmmm. On the weekend we sat down for all day breakfast (organic muesli and fruits, as you can imagine). The people across the aisle struck up a conversation "you've just come out of the barn, haven't you ?" one said, sniffing us. We chatted for a bit about the need for hybrid tractors and solar powered milking machines before they left for their aromatherapy appointment. They were a fairly typical same-sex mixed-race farming couple.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Funny you should mention that
If burberry is a sign than Chavism is hitting the streets of calgary!!!!! :scared:

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

You make the farmers sound like Afrikaners so I don't know why you'd find "rednecks" a surprising term.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Ever heard of Montreal or Ottawa?

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I was thinking a similar thing!!!

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

True but the UK has now surpassed Canada in superficial consumerism.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Canada was founded in 1867. Initially it consisted of four provinces : Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

What you probably saw in the papers when you were visiting last year were references to Saskatchewan's and Alberta's centennial celebrations. These two provinces joined the Canadian Confederation in 1905, and we were celebrating that fact during 2005.

The province that joined Canada most recently is Newfoundland & Labrador, which joined in 1949.

Although Canada officially became a country in 1867, Europeans were extracting resources from it and, indeed, settling in it, long before that. King Charles II gave the Hudson Bay Company its charter to trade in furs in 1670. The infrastructure of trading posts, forts and trading routes that the company established acted as a de facto government throughout a vast territory that even included what now are some of the northern states of the USA.

I think the 1670 Hudson Bay Company charter marked the beginning of European settlement that would "stick." Prior to that Europeans had been visiting Canada, and some even had settled here, but those activities did not lead to permanent settlement. I'm thinking of the Basque fishermen of Spain who fished along the Atlantic coast of what now is Canada. Farley Mowat and others also have postulated that Irish and Scottish fishermen came to the Atlantic coast of Canada many centuries ago. In fact they believe that some Inuit groups carry genes of those Irish and Scottish fishermen. I suppose it would be easy enough to prove or disprove that hypothesis through genetic testing, but I have not followed the issue. I just flipped through Farley Mowat's book on the topic in a bookstore. What is not in doubt is that there were Norse settlers in Newfoundland about 500 years before Columbus. Archeology has proved it. However, between the hostility they encountered on the part of aboriginal people and a change for the worse in the climate, the Norse did not manage to endure in North America. Their technology was somewhat similar to that of the aboriginal people, so they lacked an advantage in warfare. When Columbus arrived 500 years later, he came with cannons, and that changed everything.

Anyway, moving forward to the recent past and the present, dbd33 beat me to it in pointing out the fact that immigrants or children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants are perfectly capable of discriminating against immigrants who arrived even more recently than they did or indeed against people who were in a place for eons before they arrived. I grew up in Southern Africa, so I have an ironclad guarantee of that fact.

Canada has an official policy of multi-culturalism. I find that, on the whole, Canadian society is pretty tolerant. But the degree of tolerance varies from person to person. There are people with closed minds in cities, and there are people with open minds in the countryside. However, if you want to find a person with a more progressive orientation, you have a better chance of finding him/her in an urban centre. Conversely, if you want to find a person with a parochial outlook, you have a better chance of finding him/her in a rural area.

In previous generations, even non-English speaking Europeans were discriminated against. A woman who is a contemporary of mine, so in her fifties, has told me how she was hit on the hand with a ruler when she was caught talking German in her school playground in Saskatchewan. A friend of ours who is a war bride from Germany suffered for decades because her husband's Canadian family of British ancestry was snotty towards her. Most of the relatives who were unwelcoming towards her have died off now, but the matriarch of the family, whom our friend calls The Duchess and who must be approaching 100 by now, lives on in her own little English speaking Canadian world.

I don't know when the turnaround happened, but I do know that it now is considered to be a good thing for immigrants to keep their native languages alive. Certainly that is the attitude that I observe around me in Calgary.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

yep... I'm working in Montreal tomorrow... probably should have included due to its size.. but its not a major economic player like the other three (IMHO)

Toronto… Big business

Vancouver… huge port imports etc

Calgary… Oil..oil and more oil

Montreal … big old French orientated city

Ottawa mid sized city with the federal government base but not much else

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

When was the last time you were there !!

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I am enlightened, thank you :)

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I was not implying anything other than they were dutch immigrants.
I actually have the highest regard for them as dairy farmers. Which I mentioned to the Ontario official who toured the farms with me.
Which turned out well, as he then mentioned he was a dutch immigrant.
He has since helped me in getting the business immigration department to assist me with my work permit application.
So I like them even more now! :D

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Hi Willmore!
I am interested in your experience with Mennonites, as I think maybe I have drawn the wrong conclusion about them being an insular society, from your thread.

How do they take to outsiders interacting with them?.

I do have to say the ones I met at St Jacobs market appeared very friendly towards us.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

I spent most of my growing up years in the KW area which has a great population of mennonites living in and around the area. We as a family socialized with them - inviting them to our home being invited to their home. When we are at the farmers market in waterloo and see our friends we stop and chat. We also go to the farmers market at xmas time, and buy all our goodies for the xmas meal there. They will stop and chat with you and make different suggestions for meals. I can remember one xmas jim wanted to bring home some back bacon, and they went out of their way not only to slice it, but actually wrap it for us so we could just through it in the freezer when we got home.We have always found them to be very friendly and generous. Now this is just my experience with them - it must be noted however that the kids do go to a separate school from other kids and are very focused on "home" and family.

If you are ever in the St. Jacobs area, you will see them still driving horse and buggy in the middle of winter. Im amazed that they dont freeze to death being exposed to the elements.

I think the bottom line really is that people like to be treated the way in the same manner that you do!

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

We'll gloss over the fact that Montreal is Canada's largest container port, in addition to being home to much of its aerospace and other high-tech industry.

Bare reference will be made to the fact that 80% of employed Ottawans don't work for the government. Lots of them work in, gasp, high-tech.

Let's face it, Calgary's current wealth depends upon activities that are based a rather long way away from the city itself. If the global oil price ever returns to a more reasonable level, and I think it probably will, or a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine is made widely available to the consuming public, those oil sands will return to being nothing more than a stain on the landscape, as they were in the early 1960s. There will be a new version of the Calgary Stampede; money and jobs - leaving.

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

To add to what Willmore said about Mennonites ......

Like Quakers, they have a history of pacifism. Mennonite Central Committee Canada is involved in conflict resolution projects in Northern Ireland, Gautemala, Kenya and Burma. They contribute funds for the removal of land mines in Laos.

You may have heard of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). They recently were in the news because four members of CPT were kidnapped in Iraq. One was American, two were Canadian, and one was a New Zealander. After nearly four months the American hostage was killed, and then not too long afterwards the Canadians and the Kiwi were freed. Anyway, while CPT does attract volunteers from other Christian denominations and even from other religions, the four Christian denominations that founded CPT were the Mennonite Church in the USA, the Mennonite Church in Canada, the Church of the Brethren, and Friends United Meeting (an association of Quakers from North America, the Caribbean and Africa).

I was interested to read Willmore's description of Mennonites in rural Ontario. Here in Calgary Mennonites drive cars and wear "normal" clothes.

They are known to be welcoming to immigrants. They run an organisation that helps immigrants to integrate into mainstream society, to learn marketable skills, to start small businesses, etc.

The Unitarian Church of Calgary, which I attend, hosts "Collective Kitchen" once a fortnight. Collective Kitchen is a Mennonite initiative in which my church participates. It provides an opportunity for immigrants and established Canadians to learn each others' recipes, cook together, and get to know each other socially.

Whether or not Mennonites would be willing to buy a tractor from me if I tried to sell them one, I have no idea. :)

Re: Do we need to keep up with the Jones's
 

Thanks for that, my ignorant preconceived idea's are changed! :rolleyes: