With Canadians riding a roller coaster of anxiety amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff push, one Ottawa company is bringing its “eh” game to highlighting homegrown businesses in a lighthearted way.
Web development firm PageCloud has created a new website called Made in Canada, which it dubs the “unofficial, official list of Canadian owned businesses.”
Launched just over a week ago, the site features a directory of more than 30 Canadian businesses – most located in Ottawa, but some as far-flung as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
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While the site’s main purpose is to encourage consumers to purchase local goods and services as the trade war grinds on, PageCloud CEO Mike Grouchy also hopes Made in Canada will be a “fun distraction” from the constant tariff talk that has dominated the news cycle for weeks.
“When you love Canada, and you feel attacked and you’re not a politician, you can feel a bit impotent,” says Grouchy, a Newfoundland native who has called the nation’s capital home for more than 15 years.
“We kind of said, ‘You know, we have friends in the local business community and we think in Canada we’re making great products and we’re doing great things. Why don’t we just kind of have some fun with it? Let’s try to shine a light on what’s going on here in Canada.’”
Indeed, Made in Canada isn’t shy about trumpeting its creators’ patriotism, with the maple leaf front and centre in its logo.
At the same time, though, Grouchy says he and his team didn’t want to come across as being “overly nationalistic in a negative way.”
Hence, there’s a preamble that includes declarations like “We mix clam juice with tomato juice and vodka” and “We don’t hesitate to drive 300 klicks for two nights of camping.”
Meanwhile, a handy guide to Canadianisms decodes the difference between “yeah, no” and “yeah, no, for sure,” among other phrases, as well as the various connotations of that most Canadian of words, “sorry.”
And for businesses that really want to show off their allegiance to the Great White North, there’s a series of badges that can be copied and pasted to e-commerce sites, with slogans ranging from “Yes b’y, we’re Canadian” (in a nod to Grouchy’s roots) to, of course, “Unapologetically Canadian. Sorry!”
Clicking on the badge will send users back to the Made in Canada website, where they’ll (hopefully) discover other great Canadian companies, Grouchy explains.
“It’s cool to be Canadian,” he says, warming to the topic. “We’re not American. We have interesting culture all across Canada. I’m originally from Newfoundland. It’s very different there than it is here in Ontario, than it is in Alberta or British Columbia.”
Made in Canada is a bit of a coming-out party for PageCloud, which has been around for more than a decade but has mostly flown under the radar of Ottawa’s tech scene.
Like many local software companies, a big chunk of its revenues are generated south of the border – more than 60 per cent of PageCloud’s customers are based in the United States.
But Grouchy says reducing the seven-person company’s reliance on our southern neighbour was a major priority even before the trade war with the U.S. began.
“One of the things that we’ve been thinking about really the last year (is) how do we do more business with people who are close to home?” he says. “The team is all here in Ottawa. We’re all very proud Canadians. When you work with software, you always have the opportunity to go to the States, but everybody has chosen to stay here.”
Made in Canada, though, is not about boosting PageCloud’s revenues. Businesses don’t pay to be listed in its directory, and the company proudly proclaims: “We don’t make a loonie off this site.”
For Grouchy, it’s truly a labour of love.
“It’s not about making money,” he says. “It’s a way for us to do just a little bit in the face of kind of relentless uncertainty. It’s literally to just shine a light on Canadian businesses and really create a little bit of a sense of community.
“If we create a community that … drives people to discover a Canadian business that they didn’t know existed before this, then we’ve won. There’s no downside here.”
