My guide to buying more Canadian / less American
My guide to buying more Canadian / less American
In Person Groceries ➡️ Go basically anywhere but Walmart. Look for “Product of Canada” on packaging. “Made in Canada” is 2nd best. If the company is Canadian that is the 3rd best. For produce with no packaging ask someone at the store or use one of the buy Canadian apps.
Instacart (ordering groceries) ➡️ Voila (and use the shop local option in the app when possible) or https://montreal.lufa.com/en/marketplace/category/your-local-marketplace/specials
Amazon ➡️ Home Hardware, Canadian Tire, Princess Auto, KMS Tools, BMR, and Lee Valley for in person shopping. If you’re going to order online use the Canadian Tire App.
Google Drive ➡️ Sync. If anyone uses someone’s referral code they both get 1 extra GB so here’s mine. https://www.sync.com/?_sync_refer=181a30ae0
Netflix ➡️ Crave and CBC Gem
Disney Plus and Prime ➡️ Ahoy Matey, Sail the Seas
Uber Eats ➡️ Skip the Dishes
Burger King / Mcdonalds ➡️ A&W, Law & Order, Harvey's, or any local restraunt / https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_restaurant_chains
Starbucks / Mcdonalds Coffee ➡️ A local cafe or second Cup. Tim Hortons is half owned by an American company.
Subway ➡️ Mr Sub
Play Books (ebooks/ audio books app) ➡️ Kobo
Amazon ➡️ https://www.singingpebblebooks.ca/ for physical books
Dairy Queen ➡️ Chapmans from grocery store
Microsoft Office > https://www.libreoffice.org/ or you can host an Etherpad server https://etherpad.org/about
Pet Smart ➡️ Pet Valu or Ren's Pets
Default Android Apps by Google (messages/phone/contacts/notes/file explorer/gallery/etc...) ➡️ Various Fossify Apps (not Canadian but is open source and has no tracking)
Google Maps ➡️ HERE WeGo
Spotify ➡️ Qobuz
Google Search ➡️ Qwant
Tap with your Visa ➡️ Tap with your interact debit card
55 replies
Books : black bond books, indigo/chapters
Pets: bosleys (which is petvalu)
To add to your Amazon entry, vevor.ca sells a ton of their stuff on amazon but you can buy it direct from their website for the same price or less with shipping included. Most of their products are mid-level China made things like Princess Auto.
Everything is made in China these days. It's kind of unavoidable. But the quality isn't that bad.
I just bought a basic spot welder for my company from there and it's pretty damn good for the price.
Vevor and Princess Auto have replaced Amazon for 90% of my needs.
Stay strong, Canada. If you can't buy Canadian at least buy European or Asian. Other than food and defense products, us tanks barely make anything any more (lots of services and corporate bureaucracies though).
Added more great alternatives.
Google Maps ➡️ HERE WeGo
Spotify ➡️ Qobuz
Google Search ➡️ Qwant
Yo,
Dollarama, Giant Tiger for discount stores
For buying web domains, I use EasyDNS, which is fully Canadian and has been around forever.
For garden tools and yard work stuff: Gardena, Husqvarna, and Fiskar are all European.
For power tools: Bosch is European and majority owned by a charity.
For hardware stores, Home Hardware, Rona, Canadian Tire, Atlas Tools, Lee Valley, Princess Auto, are all Canadian.
PrimeCables.ca and Shopperplus.ca can replace a lot of the random cables, electronics, and accessories that I might go to Amazon for.
For hair care, Mark Anthony products are made in Canada, and owned by a European company.
I was using hosthero for my domain as they are also 100% Canadian. I create new email addresses for every thing, not only for unlimited free trials but so if I get an email address leaked I just turn it off. EasyDNS is so much better with their wildcard email.
I self host my own password manager (vaultwarden), I self host my own pictures (immich), I self my own search engine (searXNG), and there are many other things.
I am trying to get away from Apple as much as I can, I have moved to HA for most of my home automation. I have a bunch of raspberry pi’s that do stuff, I have a 2014 Mac mini that was just sitting on my desk because it could no longer get updates that I installed Debian on and now works as a media server.
I got a firewall I could install openWRT on so that I could VPN into so that I could use my pihole setup and other services away from home. I do not want to be the product I want to use services with out being sold as much as I can.
Lowes bought Rona
They sold it back soon after they bought it.
So I've been reading up on Rona since this morning. Its still listed as an asset with Sycamore partners, a private equity firm out if New York. 14 billion in assets.
They own the Rona company headquartered in Quebec. There is no listing for a publicly traded Rona stock.
http://sycamorepartners.com/investments
Rona is a US company. But, I have no idea how they are still open because I never see anyone inside their old Lowes big boxes.
However, many RONA outlets are locally owned franchises, like Home Hardware.
I didn't know this. I just hope its not a front for a US company
Edit. Sycamore, a private US investment firm owns Rona.
not sure where that clip is from, but Rona is owned and run by Sycamore.
There were several sites listing similar information.
I also looked up sycamore and added a link to their webpage
I don't remember but my local Rona, last I checked, still had huge banners that says "TOOLS MADE IN AMERICA" all over.
Ya I've been avoiding it since Lowes bought it. I still refer to Rona+ as Lowes
Same house brands too
It is not the same house brands.
It was when they were owned by Lowe's, and they carried Kobalt as their house tool brand, but after Lowe's sold them, they fire saled all their Kobalt products. Most recently they've also phased out Valspar brand paint.
Does anyone have a good rec for one that's not vibecoded slop? A couple months ago I tried a ton of apps & sites, but the info they were giving was so bad & inconsistent & obviously LLM generated.
BankruptTrump was the one that worked best for me (fewest errors... if you ignored checking the reference links) but when it was wrong it was wrong so I've pretty much given up.
I just want something human-built that I can contribute to 🥲
Thank you for making this list
Thank you for posting this, OP.
Sync and Google Drive alternative: https://cantrusthosting.coop/pricing/
Wyx alternative: https://lynx.patrii.ca/en_CA
Cloud server hosting: https://patrii.cloud/
What’s wrong with Sync?
Not sure. Personally, seeing a Facebook ad was a red flag for me.
Great information. Thank you for compiling this.
Meta --> Gander
At first read this as "Meta --> Grindr" 😋
take one for the team.
Who needs friends and family when you got gay hookups?
Decent list!
Chapman's makes crappy ice cream. Kawartha Dairy is where it's at.
I realize this is of course subjective, but that claim is just absurd.
They're right, you know.
all that stuff is Chinese anyway. Chinese Tire.
Most supplies from Home Depot are sourced in Canada.
Home Depot is an American company though (& a pretty pro-trump one at that).
As an aside, I purchased a Canadian flag from Canadian Tire that was made in Canada by a Canadian company, so not all their products are sourced outside Canada.
You found the one thing they sell made in Canada.
I mean, just as with products at any grocery store, it's all about looking closely at the labels and (in my case at least), cross-referencing through web searches and/or Canadian apps.
Avoid Lowes, Menard's, Harbor Freight, Kobalt, Stanley, Black and Decker, Ridgid, and Husky as well because they're all American.
Husky is not to be confused with Husqvarna because the latter is Swedish. Milwaukee Tools is American but owned by a company in Hong Kong so decide that for yourself.
None of these are in Canada.
Sorta. Rona is owned by Lowes now.
It's weird to see someone (presumably) from a country on the continent of North America refer to the USA as "America".
Pretty standard. The People's Republic of China is usually just called China. The United States of America is often just called America.
The PRC does rule all of China (except Taiwan, which is an island and very small in comparison).
It refers to the country's name. I don't think anyone thinks of themselves as having a shared cultural identity of "North American" tied to the land.
This is a grammar misunderstanding. I wrote American, not America.
When referring to their country it's USA, but when noting citizenship of a business or person from the US, it's "American." Similar to how a citizen of Canada like myself is referred to as Canadian. It is good to note that it was a little presumptuous of people from the US to start calling themselves American when America is the name of the whole land mass, but it's probably because they started calling themselves after the 3rd word in their countries name.
And the word "america" doesn't appear in the name of any other country on the continent(s), so it's really not as ambiguous as the pedantic "but we're all americans" commenters would suggest.
IMO, you're symbolically ceding the entire continent to them, and that's a problem when that country is quite willing to take you up on that.
It's the most convenient shorthand for the "people from the USA". The other one is "Yank", but that one has disagreements too
All Canadians call the USA America. It's just how it is, no one thinks deep on it
We are Canadian, not North American. No one ever, ever, ever says that.
I don't. I usually call it "the states" or "The US" or "shithole jesusland"
I only call it America when I'm mocking them.
Or 'murrica. Usually as response to something absurd
Which is actually somewhat unique. Full disclosure I am Canadian.
There's historically been no issue (that I'm aware of) with calling someone from the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa by their continental identity.
Wonder what happened over here? Just size of landmass and country?
"American" fucked it all up
Making a distinction between "from the USA" and "from the continent of America" is quite common in Spanish. IMO that's worth emulating.
We already have that in English. It’s “American” vs “North American”.