A Visit to Vietnam


Medicine Hat Clay Industries National Historic District had large scale photos of the people that worked in the Potteries (Medalta and Hycroft China). These were working people with muscular builds and rolled up shirt sleeves. Here at home this is a picture of my back yard. Yes, you would think that I have relocated to Vietnam. The truth is the farmers around here can't get Canadians to do agricultural work. To hot! Too cold! Too windy! Too this! Too that! If it weren't for the Mexicans and Jamaicans that leave their families to work in the orchards and vineyards of the Niagara Peninsula not a stitch of agricultural work would get done in this province. We always welcome the site of these hard working people driving by our home on their bicycles. Always a friendly smile and a wave of the hand.
My neighbour hires a extended family of Vietnamese people to maintain the vineyard. They come in like a swarm of bees and the job is done in a couple of days. Here's a clink of the glass to hard working people! Cheers!!!!!

Comments

Tracey Broome said…
We have a lot of the same in North Carolina, and I bet those folks aren't suffering from many of the health problems that those that don't want to work hard have! They work hard physically and probably sleep well at night! and they should be paid more for what they do :)
May 21, 2010 at 9:52 AM
Hollis Engley said…
Most of us folks here in the US and up in our northern neighbor came from folks like this, one way or another. I've got British millworkers and fishermen on one side, a Portuguese barber and his wife on another. Came for a better life. Nothing's changed.
May 21, 2010 at 12:24 PM
Linda Starr said…
My neighbor in California with three children got a job at an orange packing plant and she was beaten severely by the Mexicans working there when she left work; they told her they didn't want any white people working there because she was taking a job away from one of them. I myself tried to get many a job in California the last two years we lived there and was told if I didn't read, write and speak Spanish I wasn't qualified for jobs I had years of experience in. Most of the farmers I knew in California hired workers who were illegal or migrant because those workers were willing to work below minimum wage, the farmer didn't have to take out taxes, or pay worker's comp insurance. My husband's grandparents were immigrants, my mom's parents were immigrants; they came via Ellis Island legally. Illegals and migrants who are taking jobs from citizens in the USA needing and willing to work isn't the same. Perhaps in Canada farm worker's are legal, most in California are not, even back in the 1980's when I worked in the nursery (plant) trade. It's a complicated issue, but there is more than meets the eye even beyond farming.
May 21, 2010 at 9:32 PM
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