Made in Canada — a guide.

I have compiled a list of clothing labels and companies that manufacture their products (at least some of them) in Canada.

The list was posted on reddit thrice (1, 2, 3), and received a lot of feedback, as well as suggestions for brands to be added/included in the list.

The list now numbers over 400 companies ranging from diapers to cosmetics to leather to eyewear.

Recently, the process of translating it into Français has begun, though it has not yet been completed.

To download the list you have two options.

The first is for a printable version. All sections start on right-hand pages.

The second is for a digital version. Sections start on any new page, reducing the overall page count.

Both are living documents and will be updated semi-regularly by me, when I have time. Usually I wait until I have a stck of 20 or 30 changes to make. All updates are captured in the documents’ changelogs.

Reasons for making this list

I made the list because I felt that at the time there was no single, truly excellent resource for finding this information. The initial version of the list was cobbled together from random observations that I had made, and included maybe thirty brands and companies. It has now expanded to more than four hundred.

I want to support companies and organizations that employ Canadians, treat their employees fairly, and adhere to Canada’s higher standards of environmental and ethical practices. While buying things made in Canada is not an iron-clad guarantee of this, it is a start. Additionally, I feel that how we dress and provide for ourselves has a lot to do with developing local culture, something of which Canada is often accused of having very little.

The primary goal is to help people avoid clothing that is made using unscrupulous practices that exploit workers in low-wage and less-developed countries. Buying Canadian-made is not the only only way to do this, and many organizations are working to improve working conditions for the world’s garment workers in such places. I applaud and support their work.

Future versions

In the future I plan to convert this to a searchable blog, something like a tumblr, using tags to allow sorting. I also plan on hosting the information as a markdown document on Github to allow public edits.

This won’t happen until I have time, but when it does, I will probably post about it to reddit again.

Contributing

Own a company that manufactures its clothing within Canada? Know of one that I haven’t listed? Contact me!