Fly, fly, then fly some more! This is daily business when working in sales in Western Canada! Therefore, it should come as no surprise that my first column was written at an airport: Calgary, this time. I am Jurian Verwijs, born and raised in the Veluwe region, in the Netherlands. Somehow, I ended up in the ‘wild west’ of Canada. I have the honour of taking over from Mike VanSteekelenberg, who wrote his columns from eastern Canada. And even though we are both writing from Canada, we live a five-hour flight apart! Thanks for the columns, Mike. I hope I’ll be able to defend Canadian honour.
Canada has been my home since 2017. It is a culturally diverse country of vast distances and nature reserves, where everyone is an immigrant – most no more than three generations away – and where horticulture is flourishing and growing. To Europeans, Canada may seem like one country, but in reality, the eastern and western parts are very different. This also extends to floriculture, which will certainly be addressed in the upcoming columns.
I have been working in sales for Rainbow Greenhouses Inc. since 2018. Rainbow is a large family business near Vancouver that is currently undergoing a generational transition. Stan VanderWaal, who started the company around 1985, is approaching retirement age, with three of his sons eager to take over the business.
