Darren Barefoot is a writer and marketing executive based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is a founding partner at Capulet Communications, a public relations firm specializing in work with high technology companies and environmental organizations. He currently resides in Vancouver.
In 2011, Barefoot pledged to purchase products only made and sourced in Canada for the entire year and documented his progress on his blog One Year One Canadian. He was kind enough to allow us to reproduce his adventures here on our own blog.
Thanks Darren!
As my year of Canadian immersion comes to a close, I’ve realized that there’s a ton of research I’ve left undone. I simply haven’t had the time this year to...
By: Darren Barefoot
And so, my year of Canadianness reaches its crescendo this month with all-Canuck Internet use.
I’m writing this while listening to the sounds of the waves on Cox Bay intermix...
By: Darren Barefoot
Back in August, I gave up all food that wasn’t sourced in Canada. On a day-to-day basis, what has that meant?
I drink water almost exclusively. With the exception of a few...
By: Darren Barefoot
Another month, another topic. This month I added ‘transportation’ to the Canadian-only landscape that is my life. It’s one of those topics where, in retrospect, I...
By: Darren Barefoot
I first discovered the Cowboy Junkies when my brother brought home their extraordinary 1988 album, The Trinity Sessions. The band's languid rhythms and Margo Timmons's hesitant,...
By: Darren Barefoot
Let's just acknowledge something right off the bat about Canadian movies: they're rarely good. I've been watching a bunch of Canadian cinema over the summer-mostly the films...
By: Darren Barefoot
Note: I'm back-dating this post to September 15 because I failed miserably to write it last month.
For the rest of 2011, I shall not set foot on foreign soil. I know that, compared...
By: Darren Barefoot
I think about food all the time, and I hate it. I’m only a few weeks into my all-Canadian diet, and the amount of time I need to spend shopping for and preparing food is a bit...
By: Darren Barefoot
I was about 11 years old when my parents got divorced, and I lived with my father until I left for university. When my Mom left, she gave my father a binder with seven recipes in it....
By: Darren Barefoot
It's only been a few weeks, but I miss The New Yorker already. I've shared a subscription with my brother and father for the past couple of years, and found the magazine incomparable...
By: Darren Barefoot
I recently watched an episode of Being Erica which began with Erica awakening to find her bed empty. Her boyfriend, shirtless under an apron, greets her from the kitchen, where he's...
By: Darren Barefoot
I know, I'm a bit behind. I failed to deploy a contest last month. What can I tell you? The categories are adding up, and I'm having a hard enough time just wrestling my busy...
By: Darren Barefoot
A little more than six years ago, my wife and I purchased three and a half acres of high bank (that means that the last step before the water is, as they say, a doozy) waterfront property...
By: Darren Barefoot
When I describe this project to people, the category they usually commiserate with me about is movies and television. "I could never do that," they say. "I like way too...
By: Darren Barefoot
Services is out. Culture is in.
Thanks to commenter Natalie, I've changed things up for the month of May. This month I'm adding ‘culture' to the mix.
What do...
By: Darren Barefoot
Purity is hard to find. That's been one of the lessons of the first five months of this project. It's really, really difficult to find products that were designed, sourced and...
By: Darren Barefoot
This weekend I saw my first Canadian movie of the year. And, delightfully, it was in a theatre. The High Cost of Living is a drama set in Montreal, and stars Zach Braff (yep, that American...
By: Darren Barefoot
Now we are getting serious.
Finding Canadian-made household goods has been a challenge, but switching toothpaste and deodorant is, by any standard, pretty much a foamy latte problem....
By: Darren Barefoot
As regular readers know, I run a monthly contest on the site. I'm once again tardy with this month's contest but give me a break, I've been scouring the city for Canadian-made...
By: Darren Barefoot
There's a perfectly good reason for why I've been tardy in discussing investments, this month's category. Here it is:
I know almost nothing about the topic.
My wife...
By: Darren Barefoot
Earlier this week I was a guest on The Bill Good Show, a venerable local radio show here in Vancouver. There was the usual chat about the project, and then we took some calls from listeners.
Mr....
By: Darren Barefoot
"85% of the shoes sold in Canada are made in China." That's what I learned from the clerk at the third shoe store I visited today. She seemed to know a little more than...
By: Darren Barefoot
As we move into month three of the project, I've had time to familiarize myself with an array of Canadian-made household goods that I started using back in January. Here, then,...
By: Darren Barefoot
Sapadilla makes "nice little eco-cleaners" from their headquarters in Burnaby, BC. Co-founder Jill Goodbrand (how could you not be an entrepreneur with a name like that?)...
By: Darren Barefoot
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