Canadian Tire

Am I a real Canadian male?

Now that we’re back in Canada, and not in France, we’re being inundated with junk mail in our mailbox. That, of course, includes Canadian Tire flyers.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in an age when Kelowna didn’t have a Canadian Tire store. The chain was founded in 1922, and renamed Canadian Tire Corporation in 1927. I’m not sure when they expanded westward, but now (according to Wikipedia) they also run “financial services subsidiary Canadian Tire Bank, Mark's, FGL Sports (including Sport Chek and Sports Experts), PartSource, and the Canadian operations of Party City. Canadian Tire acquired the Norwegian clothing and textile company Helly Hansen from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in 2018.”

Regardless, I was just never quite a Canadian Tire customer. When I walk through their stores I just see stuff that seems second rate, or not quite anything I might buy, or just plain strange.

And I speak as someone who has done car repairs, and home repairs, and construction. Somehow Canadian Tire is always decidedly amateur, while I like to feel professional.

A good example. I picked up, free, two of the Canadian Tire knockoffs of the classic Black and Decker Workmate. Superficially similar, right, and surely not hard to knock-off a copy?

Wrong! The Canadian Tire version was hard to use, tended to fall apart, and was just plain unpleasant.

Somehow Canadian Tire’s entire rationale is to get you in the door, show you a top quality tool from someone like Dewalt, then entice you with a seemingly similar cheapo Chinese knockoff.

Just the same right? Not likely. The one on the right is the one that is more likely to cut off a finger.

Really, Canadian Tire is a store full to the brim with stuff that you buy when you can’t or won’t go to the store with the top-of-the-line items. And yes, I do sometimes grab stuff there when it seems easiest, but the older I get, the more I like to either plan or wait until I can shop at a store that will give me what I need, not just something that is “good enough.”

To be honest, since returning to Canada we get that feeling an awful lot. We see government and institutions, and especially corporations, that are second-best, deliver half of what you would get elsewhere, and obviously expect you to just shut up and be happy for whatever they hand you.

Whether it’s a House of Commons that inexplicably doesn’t realize they’re celebrating an ex-Nazi, or our new home of Nova Scotia that rates an “F” in poverty reduction, while offering not the slightest hint when the next COVID vaccine will be available, it just feels like we’re getting the cheap knock-offs once again.