one year, one canadian

These days, any time I’m in a store, I ask what products they have that are made in Canada. Not, you know, while I’m grocery shopping, but any store with a relatively limited inventory.

I stopped into a men’s store in Vancouver’s fashionable Gastown district. I’ve bought a lot of clothes from them over the past few years–they stock a combination of stuffy, preppy Britishness and gentle funk that is my sartorial sweet spot.

Did they have any Canadian-made clothes? Nope. I pressed my luck, and asked about any clothes simply designed by Canadians. The clerk glared at me through her Macross-era Japanimation haircut and said “well, we’ve got these wallets”. They were very fetching, but I could hardly wear one to a client meeting.

I have, however, had more success scouring the aisles of drug stores across the country. While in Toronto on business, I bought some Cromwell & Cruthers shaving oil. I liked its old-timey brand and downright medicinal bottle.

I did not like its ineffectiveness as a facial lubricant. I rejected it for my shaving soap (I forget where I got it, maybe here?).

For the last couple of months, I’ve been looking for a replacement for some Canadian-made hair gel which makes me smell like a 13-year-old version of myself. The gel also produced a kind of Jersey Shore crunchiness to my hair.

I was excited, then, to discover both a pomade (yes, I said “pomade”) and a putty made by La Coupe in Quebec. What’s the difference between a pomade, a gel and a putty? I’d need an advanced degree in salon thermodynamics to answer that question. I can tell that the putty brings just the right intensity of hold to my hair.

My hair is no more than three-quarters of an inch at any point on my head, so the whole question of “hold” is pretty moot. However, I’m happy to find a product that works well.

I’ve also been relying on a raft of products from Green Beaver. They’ve been an oddly-named godsend, and I’m currently using their lavendar shampoo (my hair sure smells purty), toothpaste (a woeful substitute for Colgate, Crest or any reputable brand), deodorant (over-promises and under-delivers) and facial cleanser (worryingly gelatinous, but it gets the job done).

I have yet to find a Canadian household product that’s markedly superior to its foreign-made, global-corporation-backed competitors. A variety of the products I’m using have green or eco-friendly characteristics, and this always coincides with “not as effective as the nastier stuff”. I’m happy to apply a little more elbow grease to compensate, but I’d hope to have my mind blown by some Canadian-made stuff a little more often.