Undergraduate Page
A SALESMAN IN CANADA
By M. D. BUTLER (Trinity College, Oxford)
N April 1st, 1948, I sailed from Liverpool in the liner Ascania ' for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Among the passengers, from the first moment that they came together for the Customs formalities, there was a strange sense of tension, of suspense, for they were almost all leaving England permanently to start a new life in Canada. Time was standing still for these people of every age and class—young men who had trained in Canada during the war, fiancées of Canadian servicemen, young, adventurous families, superficially insignificant middle-aged couples, old people rejoining children—and all their words and wonderings were pregnant with regrets and hopes. For weeks they had been emigrants, active, planning, worried, sad, and often, I believe, afraid ; now for eight days there was nothing to do but eat and sleep and talk—and think ; almost before they realised it they were immigrants, newcomers in a strange land.
As for me, I was cheating ; I was playing the game with nothing to lose and everything to gain. I had to find work, certainly, for I was allowed no dollars ; but I had my return ticket in my suitcase and relations to keep me from starvation—indeed, such is hospitality in Canada, relations to keep me from work at all, if I had been so inclined. So my admiration and my hopes were all with the others, as the boat train pulled out of Halifax, excited though I was at the scent and atmosphere of a new land and a strange way of life. They will have been there a year now. I am sure that there are few of them today who regret their new beginning.
Almost as soon as I arrived in Toronto, I started to look for a job. It is cold and bleak in Canada in April, and I walked many miles, got on and off a hundred trams (" street-cars " in the new world) in the biting winds that seemed embittered by the skyscrapers. Ten, fifteen times a day I would penetrate into the steaming com- fort of friendly personnel-managers' offices, and still I had no job. It was not that few were to be had, but that I was searching for the ideal ; I wanted something temporary and interesting and well- paid, and this was a tall order. I never imagined that the ideal job would be to sell clothes in a department store ; that seemed mechanical and dull, and probably ill-paid. But that is what I did, and I learnt more about Canada and her people, their customs, thoughts and way of life; than I could have learnt in any other way. I went to Eaton's, the head branch of a national chain of stores, employing fifteen thousand workers in Toronto alone, and was given a job selling in the men's clothing department.
First I went to school to learn to make out the different bills for cash, C.O.D., account and instalment purchases, and to learn ho- to sell things so that they stayed sold ; for the motto of the firm is: " Satisfaction or money returned, and the customer is king." Whatever happens he (in Canada, even for men's clothes, more often she, for it is a woman's country) must never go away disgruntled or ill-pleased. In each department all the goods are on display and each salesman sells what he can ; pay in my department was entirely on commission, five per cent. of the value of everything sold and not returned. In this way a great incentive to good salesmanship was offered, and pay-packets of fifteen or even twenty pounds a week were not uncommon. There was a keen spirit of competition and virtually no restrictive feeling among the eighteen or twenty salesmen ; provided one played to the rules of the game (kept one's own stock of clothes in good orders and never stole another man's sale) the thousand or more customers who passed through every day were anybody's ball. I quickly learnt by experience, what I had been told and scarcely believed, that to sell to any but the most decided buyers you must gain their confidence, their friendship even ; and so, as time went on, I came to talk to a wide cross-section of the people about many things. It is strange the intimate stories about her life or family that a mother or a wife will tell you, as she buys a golf jacket for the son or husband ; it is strange how you can draw a man out about politics, or even his business, as he tries on a suit or a sports-jacket. I believe that the very anonymity of the sa. lesman loosens the customer's tongue.
At the sound of an English accent there were two immediate and almost universal responses. Firstly, a sympathetic and often mildly incredulous series of questions about the rigours of present-day life in the Old Country. And secondly, the almost rhetorical question, proudly put, with the assurance of only one possible answer, " How do you like Canada ? " Towards England the Canadians feel a deep, natural good will, and a desire for and confi- dence in her recovery so enthusiastic and naive as to be most refreshing to anyone lately among the governed in this country. But it is a friendship which only just escapes being patronising ; gone are the days when they laboured under a sense of inferiority, when they felt that the Old Country looked down on them and patronised them. They believe in her spirit and the strength of her people still, but life in Britain seems antiquated and behind the times. A few, but only a very few, expressed the view that England is again first to try to find a way of life to suit the present times, a pioneer on that path of reconciliation of freedom with the welfare- State which all free nations will have to follow.
But that was a very far from general opinion. For most Canadians both the greatness of their nation (and nationalism is very strong in Canada) and their material abundance, which is great and fairly well distributed among the nation, are largely due to the competitive exploitation of her natural resources by free enterprise. And well may they be proud of their material achievements. Most salesmen in my department owned a car which seemed ostentatiously large by our standards. There can be very few homes, at any rate in the towns, where the refrigerator, washing-machine and electric stove and iron are not taken as matters of course, as necessities of life. Their towns are modern and almost completely devoid of slums, their country unspoilt and prosperous. In the world of ideas they are firmly bound in theory and practice to the ideal of a fair chance for all. Class feeling is non-existent, and even envy of riches one only sensed occasionally. There is no restrictionist tendency among labour or capital, and everywhere one senses a great and justifiable faith in the future expansion of the country's power.
At the time I was in Toronto the Ontario State Government had completed about half of a scheme for bringing in seventy thousand immigrants, and so I frequently had the opportunity of talking with people who had arrived quite recently in Canada, in addition to experiencing the keen interest of Canadians in my own reactions. For the prospective immigrant the results of these conversations could scarcely have been more encouraging. In no sphere was there, or indeed, I believe, will there be, any shortage of jobs, and the higher salaries more than offset the greater cost of living. English education is widely respected, and English university degrees are considered a high recommendation for employment. Housing is difficult but easier than here, and there are no other shortages. Above all, the people are perhaps the most hospitable and friendly in the world.
To anyone who is not overburdened with capital—£1,000 is the allowance for the first four years—and who seeks a country where initiative and ability will be rewarded and those rewards can be well used, I cannot recommend too strongly immigration to Canada.
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