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  #21  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 3:48 PM
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Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly View Post
I refuse to believe they wear them because they like them, because they're ugly (as all rubbers are). Since Hunters cost like $200 a pair I suspect its a show of disposable income, much like Canada Goose jackets, since it never getting cold enough here to ever need to wear one of them. 99% of the time you won't be dredging through knee-high water while walking around the city, so they serve no other purpose than to show people that you have money to spend (or give the illusion that you do. Whether you do or not is another question)
The rubber boots trend here in NS seems to be a sort of NS/East Coast patriotism thing. Like "Hey, we're real and rustic and take pride in dressing for our wet and unpredictable climate rather than for impractical style!" People don't seem to wear them solely for fashion when the weather is nice, but the least bit of precipitation brings them out.
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  #22  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 3:57 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
That's hilarious. Urban women with rubber boots in the city...

FWIW, I had rubber boots on all day yesterday, working in a cooling tower basin that had about a foot left of water at the bottom that we couldn't manage to pump out. I sometimes have them when going to my land depending on what I intend to do over there (if it doesn't involve the beaver ponds, usually I don't bother and stick with my usual running shoes). The thought of putting rubber boots on on a morning when I'm in the city and knowing I'll be in the city all day, is incredibly alien. Though, the part of me that refuses to admit it could be just for show kinda likes the idea of cute St. John's women in rubber boots and plaid...

(edit - learning such strange things about other places from locals of these places is one of the things I love about SSP)
It may be somewhat climate related, as well off women wearing rubber boots is a thing in the UK too, though nice ones not like those depicted on the man in the picture. It also carries over from horse riding - some days it is probably easier to wear some (nicer) rubber boots when it's sloppy out and eventually everyone does it.
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  #23  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 4:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly View Post
I refuse to believe they wear them because they like them, because they're ugly (as all rubbers are). Since Hunters cost like $200 a pair I suspect its a show of disposable income, much like Canada Goose jackets, since it never getting cold enough here to ever need to wear one of them. 99% of the time you won't be dredging through knee-high water while walking around the city, so they serve no other purpose than to show people that you have money to spend (or give the illusion that you do. Whether you do or not is another question)
There's definitely a lot of that - but I disagree completely that they're ugly. Excluding nice high-heeled winter boots, Hunters tend to be the best-looking footwear option.

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  #24  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 4:24 PM
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Don't think there aren't any Hunters on the west coast. They were trendy for years but the trend is cooling a bit. Aigle from France also a bit popular.
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  #25  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 4:34 PM
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It's interesting how it can change in some places and not others. The idea of Aigle becoming at all popular is just so foreign to me. Rubber boots may be replaced as a style here, but the specific brand Hunter never will. It's British, so people like that, and it's more importantly ingrained - like Fussells cream, Tetley tea, or Eversweet margarine, Lamb's Rum, Blue Star beer, Maple Leaf balogna, Jam Jams, Purity syrup, or pull-tab lotto tickets, etc. Things that reach that status here never get replaced unless the product is literally no longer produced. Not many things achieve that status, of course, but once they do, it's done for generations.
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  #26  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 6:03 PM
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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
There's definitely a lot of that - but I disagree completely that they're ugly. Excluding nice high-heeled winter boots, Hunters tend to be the best-looking footwear option.
Of course this is a matter of opinion, but being the nicest footwear option is like only getting the clap after sleeping with a hooker who has both the clap and HIV. It's still pretty bad.
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  #27  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 8:33 PM
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This is a good topic, but it's ill-served by letting be yet another venue for the working out of our national complex with the United States. I think the best metric is comparing the difference between large city and small town dwellers within countries rather than constructing yet another straw-filled US southerner and gathering in the town square to point.

In my experience small-town Canadians are tethered rather tightly to the metropolitan narrative they see on their various screens; there isn't an oppositional rural/local culture between them in the same way as there is in countries where more people live in small towns versus larger cities (like, yes, the US, but also places like Italy too). Our rural culture seems to be fairly at peace with our large cities and the views that emanate therefrom, and is I guess is in that sense 'sophisticated'. I would not use that word, but it's fine.
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  #28  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 8:40 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
That's hilarious. Urban women with rubber boots in the city...
It's pretty common in Ottawa. Lots of women wear rubber boots on rainy days.

It helps that most people in Ottawa are from small towns, I guess.
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  #29  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2018, 9:40 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
This is a good topic, but it's ill-served by letting be yet another venue for the working out of our national complex with the United States. I think the best metric is comparing the difference between large city and small town dwellers within countries rather than constructing yet another straw-filled US southerner and gathering in the town square to point.
Yes ..Agreed..That wasn't my intent.I was just using what that Walmart study I read about years ago as sort of a segue..I like where you want to steer the discussion towards however, and perhaps a more apt term other then sophistication could be used, or conjunction with. Do rural people in say Italy latch onto bigger city trends for example?..Are their fingers on the pulse on what's happening in Milan for example as far as latest music trends or fashion styles?

Last edited by Razor; Oct 13, 2018 at 10:00 PM.
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  #30  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2018, 5:42 AM
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I live in Timmins, ON population about 42,000. About 5 years ago our city hired a marketing company, The St. Clements Group, to come up with a new logo, slogan, methods of advertising, etc.. The marketing company is located in Toronto.

A man working for that company visited our city and came up with what he thought of "typical" residents here:

"Tim Hortons, not Starbucks
Ford F-150, not VW Bug
John Wayne, not Hugh Grant
Steak, not sushi
Hockey, not ribbon dancing
The Magnificent Seven, not Wuthering Heights"

Many people here were extremely pissed and insulted when the above was presented at a city council meeting. I get that a small isolated Northeastern Ontario city with mining as the main industry isn't going to have the variety of somewhere like Toronto but that guy's view of us was ridiculous. And just FYI we now have a Starbucks location (okay we do have 8 Tim Hortons locations) and we have two very popular sushi restaurants. And find me somewhere in Canada where ribbon dancing is more popular than hockey!
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  #31  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2018, 10:41 AM
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Originally Posted by Loco101 View Post
I live in Timmins, ON population about 42,000. About 5 years ago our city hired a marketing company, The St. Clements Group, to come up with a new logo, slogan, methods of advertising, etc.. The marketing company is located in Toronto.

A man working for that company visited our city and came up with what he thought of "typical" residents here:

"Tim Hortons, not Starbucks
Ford F-150, not VW Bug
John Wayne, not Hugh Grant
Steak, not sushi
Hockey, not ribbon dancing
The Magnificent Seven, not Wuthering Heights"

Many people here were extremely pissed and insulted when the above was presented at a city council meeting. I get that a small isolated Northeastern Ontario city with mining as the main industry isn't going to have the variety of somewhere like Toronto but that guy's view of us was ridiculous. And just FYI we now have a Starbucks location (okay we do have 8 Tim Hortons locations) and we have two very popular sushi restaurants. And find me somewhere in Canada where ribbon dancing is more popular than hockey!
It is taking us a long time to let go of these sorts of assumptions, in rural areas and cities of all sizes.

In Canada, like the rest of the developed world, there is no longer a insurmountable cultural division between the city and the countryside. Today, while still a generalization, it's almost more accurate to view small towns as simply having less variety than a large city, as opposed to being an altogether different beast.

Our stereotypes of urban and rural are irrelevant today. I could go to St. Anthony tomorrow and the people there would be little different from those in suburban towns around St. John's. We'd understand each other, get all the same references. The most shocking thing I'm likely to encounter is a middle-aged woman with heavily-hairsprayed bangs and outdated jeans. A century ago? I would've struggled just understanding the local accent and vocabulary. The lifestyle and culture would've been literally medieval compared to St. John's. There wouldn't even be indoor plumbing or electricity. That's the era our stereotypes of each other are based on.

Today we're trying to layer stereotypes based on a division of that magnitude on top of differences as weak as Starbucks versus Tim Horton's. Well, Linda, they're both awful. And they occupy the same cultural niche - the existence of either, whatever their relative dominance, in two places shows they share something in common.
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  #32  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2018, 11:14 AM
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  #33  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2018, 8:02 PM
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But ya, I am under the impression that small town Canadians are more likely to have traveled abroad to Europe and Asia than Americans where they may only have vacationed in Branson, MO or Myrtle Beach.
Do small town Canadians (without recent European or Asian immigrant roots) really travel to Europe and Asia that much more than Americans? And is this really the cause of the "sophistication"?

How much does Europe or Asia influence Canadians more than Americans?

Americans seem to travel more within their country than Canadians though.

Is the average small town Canadian likely spending more time in the nearest big city than small town Americans and their big cities? On the one hand, Canada's population, small town or not is generally more concentrated geographically, in a few spots.

On the other hand the US having many more big cities and moderately sized ones means small town Americans aren't that far from a big city within their region/state.
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  #34  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2018, 8:03 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
The internet is the world's largest city.
But that should level differences between small town Canada and big city Canada, vs small and big cities in other countries alike.

It's not like small town Canadians are more heavily internet users than small towners of other nations, is it?
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  #35  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2018, 1:23 PM
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I would think that the answers to this are quite varied and highly dependent on the particular town. Being in the orbit of a relatively close dominant metropolitan area doesn't necessarily make one sophisticated even if they may know the best new restaurants to go to (occasionally) in said nearby city.

The "Canadian towns are more sophisticated than American" trope isn't exactly a constant either. I just got back from a trip to Portland and the Oregon coast and can safely say that a place like Astoria or even Newport has a lot more going on than say, Simcoe Ontario (randomly picked a town around the same size). Then again so do lots of other places in Canada.

FWIW I was thinking of getting a pair of rubber boots for this winter... they are quite useful for going to work in the snow and then changing shoes once you get to the office.
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  #36  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2018, 10:25 PM
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Simcoe's downtown is one of the worst in the province for a town of its size. There is barely a single business of significance in the downtown - only a few banks, a small pharmacy, and a lot of very small low traffic businesses that are nothing more than bottom feeders, not key businesses.

A place like Cobourg is very clean and modern, while Simcoe is more the other side of things.

Honestly it has a lot to do with the local industry. Simcoe is US Steel and oil refineries. Cobourg is more white collar. Education rates and incomes are likely much higher in Cobourg than Simcoe, even though both are both about as far outside of the GTA.

You can't generalize across all of Canada, yet alone across all of the US. Some towns are more "sophisticated", some aren't.
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  #37  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2018, 10:41 PM
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Originally Posted by Capsicum View Post
Do small town Canadians (without recent European or Asian immigrant roots) really travel to Europe and Asia that much more than Americans? And is this really the cause of the "sophistication"?

How much does Europe or Asia influence Canadians more than Americans?

Americans seem to travel more within their country than Canadians though.

Is the average small town Canadian likely spending more time in the nearest big city than small town Americans and their big cities? On the one hand, Canada's population, small town or not is generally more concentrated geographically, in a few spots.

On the other hand the US having many more big cities and moderately sized ones means small town Americans aren't that far from a big city within their region/state.
I'd say that Canadians who can afford to travel overseas generally do, whereas Americans who fit this bill generally don't.

It's always striking how conspicuously absent Americans are in some of the world's big tourism hotspots. I would estimate that roughly 1/3 of all the people on earth who have the disposable income to travel to foreign destinations on a regular basis are American. But I don't think I'm alone in observing that there aren't many places outside of countries that border the US where Americans make up 1/3 of all the tourists.

That said, I've noticed that the Americans that do manage to travel overseas are now some of the most well-behaved and educated tourists out there. They're usually older and really good company. The stereotype of the boorish American tourist is really dated.
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  #38  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 3:01 AM
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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
Today, while still a generalization, it's almost more accurate to view small towns as simply having less variety than a large city, as opposed to being an altogether different beast.
And the differences between individuals are much more significant than the average differences between towns. There are lots of interesting small town people and lots of boring people in big cities.

Lots of people who talk about how their amazing town has eight thousand festivals from every country of the world spend their weekends at home watching Netflix or doing something else you can do in any small town.
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  #39  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 3:23 AM
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Even though many distinctions have greatly diminished with modern communications, internet, etc. available, there is still a large difference in the variety of activities available, and the much touted cultural diversity, lacking in most small towns, as compared to larger cities, which in turn does impact attitudes and activities. Small town residents are more homogeneous, tending to live, vote, think, and act more alike. Of course, there is also repetition in larger cities, but also more choice, which reflects on individuals; so whether you can equate diversity, and variety of experiences with sophistication is another question for debate.

Last edited by Architype; Oct 16, 2018 at 4:00 AM.
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  #40  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 7:48 AM
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There are some people whose personal idiosyncrasies will be apparent no matter what their background. Other people default to their ambient culture. In smaller towns, this culture can be more local. In the metropoli, it is that of the media and commercial networks and their great engines of narrative.

For this reason, metropolitans can sometimes seem more homogeneous than their country-mouse cousins. We have all remarked on how well your average, say, Berliner fits into a place like Toronto or San Francisco or even Buenos Aires. This is less true if you pick smaller towns from each of these countries.

(I was in Esbjerg a while back and it was a very 'holy fuck I totally live in Denmark' sort of thing. In Copenhagen this is very muted.)
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