The Importance of Atlantic Canada on Canadian Buisness

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I wasn’t born in Atlantic Canada but Atlantic Canadian business certainly has had an impact on my life. My father has worked for McCain Foods for over 25 years and is currently employed as the Retail Area Sales Manager, Atlantic Canada for McCain Foods so it’s no coincidence that I was born in Kitchener Waterloo just forty minutes from Sobeys Ontario’s head office which was located in Brantford Ontario and my sister in St. John’s N.L. just two years later. I guess we moved a lot in those early years, if you call six moves in 14 years a lot, but McCain was growing and McCain always promoted from within wherever possible. In this paper I will discuss some of the reasons I feel Atlantic Canadians play such an important role in Canadian business and what motivates them. I’ll draw on some of my own personal observations as well as others from reference materials. For some reason there is the undeniable need for Atlantic Canadians to return to their roots. It happened when my grandfather returned from Ontario to retire in Newfoundland after completing a career as a captain on the Great Lakes and it happened for my mother and father when they moved to St. John’s N.L. after living in Toronto for many years. It also happened to the McCain brothers when they returned to Florenceville N.B. to start a frozen food empire that is now the largest producer of frozen french fries in the world. The Sobeys who still maintain their head office in Stellarton Nova Scotia and the Irvings who maintain head offices in both St. John N.B. and Moncton N.B. and the Ganongs from St. Stephen could easily relocate their head offices to Toronto but choose not to. There is definitely something other than geography that keeps these prominent Atlantic Canadian... ... middle of paper ... ...ography Bruce, Alec, Give ‘til it Works, Atlantic Business Magazine, Vol 21, Issue 3. Electronic. DeMont, John, Citizens Irving: K.C. Irving and his Legacy, Doubleday Canada Limited, Toronto, 1991. 171-176. Print. Joyce, Ron, Always Fresh, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, Toronto, 2006. 222. Print. Pitts, Gordon. The Codfathers: lessons from the Atlantic business elite. Key Porter Books, Toronto 2005. 19-27. Print. Sawler, Harvey, Twenty-First-Century Irvings, Nimbus Publishing Limited, Halifax, 2007. 130. Print. Stoffman, Daniel, From the Ground Up: The first fifty years of McCain Foods, McCain Foods Limited, Toronto, 2007. Print. Stephen Harper Quote, Toronto Sun, Toronto, May 31, 2002. Electronic. (Unable to find original article/quote was published in the Toronto sun.) Harper plans to battle ‘culture of defeatism’ in Atlantic Canada, CBC News, 2002. Electronic.

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