Enter your name:

Galt, Canada or Galt, USA?

In 1971 a journalist called Robert Perry visited the town of Galt in eastern Canada. This area had a long tradition of industry with many family-owned factories that made products such as shoes, clothing and machinery. But Perry did not feel optimistic about the future of Galt as a proud center of Canadian industry. He thought that many managers of family firms lacked the entrepreneurial skills, the energy and the (1 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain work habits of their grandfathers and great grandfathers who had first established the firms in the nineteenth century. Perry predicted that within a few years most of the factories in the (2 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain would be taken over by larger, more powerful companies in the neighbouring United States.

But 25 years later, in 1996, it appears that Perry's prediction was wrong. It is true that a few family companies have been Americanized. In those cases the takeover bids were just too attractive to (3 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain . But many of the Galt manufacturing families (4 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain their family firms, in spite of the enormous difficulties small businesses face in today's global economy. How did these family-owned businesses manage to hold on to their independence? Mostly by being able to (5 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain to changes in worldwide supply and demand.

Take Canadian General-Tower, for example. This company, which is owned by the Chaplin family, has a history of adapting to change. Earlier this century, it used to specialize in products made of rubber, but when this (6 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain became unavailable during World War II, the company had to make its products from something else. So Canadian General-Tower started making raincoats and shower curtains from plastic. Recently, however, plastic imports from Taiwan became so cheap that the Canadian products could not compete. So once again, the company had to (7 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain new customers and a new product. Now the company makes vinyl, a kind of plastic used for covering car seats. Mr. Chaplin presently has 700 employees working for him, compared to 200 in 1974. He is happy that his company has remained in Canadian hands, and pleased that Galt has had a (8 revival reject resource seek rigorous respond region retain instead of the decline Perry expected. But Chaplin warns that independence may be difficult to maintain. "You have to be cautious about being too nationalistic," he says. "In the future we may need to join up with an American company in order to remain successful."

--from the Toronto Globe & Mail, April 1996