Old Country Ties
Not only are immigrants inclined to become entrepreneurs, they bring an innate selling proposition: the flavour of home
by Scott Messenger
Andrés Herrera warned me about this. “For a lot of Canadians,” he said, “the granadilla is… hold on. I want the right word. I don’t want to use ‘disgusting.’” He paused, searching for a salable descriptor for the fruit that makes rare appearances in Canadian supermarkets as “orange passion fruit.” Finally, he decided on the plain truth, slightly softened. “It’s not appealing – at first. But if you taste it, it tastes like holidays.”
A week after that telephone conversation, I’m in the tiny basement of the Canyon Meadows Community Hall, located in its eponymous middle-class southwest Calgary neighbourhood. Displayed on tables along the walls are the various fruits Herrera’s company, More than Mangos Inc., has been importing from his native Colombia since last November. While a few curious customers check out guava, dragon fruit, papaya and cape gooseberry, lingering over exotics like tangy lulos and tamarillos or a spiky green soursop the size of your head, I stare into the dark heart of a granadilla. Herrera was right the first time.
After cracking the rind of the peach-sized, bulb-shaped fruit, I discover what looks like sunflower seeds nestled in a pale, glistening phlegm – something more alien than exotic. But, after mustering the courage to actually sample the gooey innards, the flavour is nothing short of sweetly scented roses and mild honey.
If Herrera has just one business advantage, this is it in a granadilla rind: the novelty of the foreign brought to Calgarians at the price of three or five bucks. Stripping away market research, business plans and the logistics of getting fruit into a Canadian community hall within a week of being cut from trees and vines rooted in rich Andean soils, More than Mangos is, in essence, an accident of birth. After 14 years in Canada, and following a string of sales jobs, some journalism stints and public-relations work, Herrera is returning to his roots, so to speak, and finding unique opportunities in what’s as familiar to him as staving off scurvy with apples and oranges is to most Albertans.
He’s not alone. Jamaican-born Barry Lewis, with his English-born wife, Maureen, has found a market for fresh goat meat in Alberta’s Caribbean and African communities. Arthur Vaquilar, who arrived in Edmonton with his family as a three-year-old from the Philippines, has spent the past five years retailing cigars, including a few Filipino sticks. And, also in Edmonton, Indian-born Amolak Grewal has bypassed Indian-made stuff for Indians themselves, and therefore for skill sets badly needed in Alberta’s labour market.
What’s common here, even if only trickled down from parents well acquainted with the difference between here and there – something the 103,700 immigrants that arrived in Alberta between 2001 and 2006 still wrestle with – is a drive that comes from risking a future in a foreign country. But as it turns out, cultural differences can actually tip the odds of success in their favour.
Canada may have always been a nation of immigrants, but, perhaps particularly in Alberta, for either its voracious appetite for labour or simply for stuff to soak up disposable incomes, there may be more niches to fill than ever. As far as Herrera is concerned, “Immigrants have a huge opportunity right now.”
In other words, the land of apples and oranges may be ripe for the picking.
Walk through certain neighbourhoods, and entrepreneurialism can take on an instinctual quality independent of culture, like an evolutionary mechanism for adapting to difficult environments. Take northeast Edmonton’s notoriously dilapidated Alberta Avenue. While city councillors work to kick-start gentrification, immigrants have taken advantage of the lowest rates for retail space in the city. Even at a modest pace, a 20-minute walk encompasses a Portuguese bakery, a Lebanese barber, Italian, Somali, Thai and Caribbean restaurants, a Hindu devotional supply shop, Balkan, Latin American and Halal grocers, and a Puerto Rican tailor, for a few examples.
To fasten a link between immigration and self-employment, compare rates to the native-born. A 2005 survey conducted by the Kauffman Foundation, a U.S. think-tank for fostering entrepreneurialism, found 0.35% of immigrants to be self-starters versus 0.28% of the homegrown population. Though there isn’t a similar index in Canada, where nearly 20% of us are foreign-born versus 12.5% in the U.S., immigrating can make owning and operating a business attractive, regardless of any extra effort required, such as learning a new language. This may be for the simple fact that many, especially those immigrating from places like Africa or the Caribbean, where retail is often a simple matter of cobbling together a roadside kiosk, already have entrepreneurial experience. There’s also the fact that, with respect to the incoming professional set, certifications often require costly upgrading upon arrival. In light of such factors, chances are, the Canadian situation mirrors the American.
“Lots of things determine whether you’ll be an entrepreneur: your family history, luck, the state of the economy,” says Harvey Krahn, chair of the University of Alberta’s sociology department, whose research focuses on labour markets, education and immigration. But, he adds, “I believe that, on average, an immigrant coming to this country is a little more motivated to get ahead. If you think about any country from which immigrants are leaving, the people who are most likely to be able to get out are more motivated and perhaps have a few more entrepreneurial skills. And setting up a business here is a way to get ahead when there are barriers in other places.”
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