This article is taken from the
special Figaro "From East to West - Living in Canada why not you?"
.
This issue offers you to answer the questions you ask yourself as simply as possible.
This, with the help of practical texts, maps and testimonials from French people living in Canada.
Like many great adventures, this one begins with a love story.
Jean-Jacques arrived in Vancouver in 1989 to learn English in the hotel industry.
He finds himself 6 years later in charge of the reception of the famous Frontenac hotel in Quebec.
It is in the Quebec capital that he will meet his future wife Isabelle.
When the time came to start a family, the couple in search of wide open spaces and tranquility settled in Charlevoix, a mountainous region along the St. Lawrence.
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They both find jobs in the luxury hotel industry, but very quickly they want to have their own "business" in this region known to produce very good farm foods.
In 2002, they bought a farm in the village of Saint-Urbain and decided to embark on an activity that did not exist in the region: duck breeding.
Jean-Jacques then returned to France to learn the trade on a farm in Béarn.
The following year, they started the Basque Farm.
The spirit of entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs at heart, Jean-Jacques and Isabelle are not afraid of challenges, but recognize that they alone would not have succeeded and praise the famous Quebec-style networking.
Jean-Jacques affirms that in Quebec
"the immigrant, especially if he wants to set up or take over a company, must show a certain humility and not settle with the idea of upsetting the people who are there. for 400 years!
For Isabelle, what counts
“is always to go ahead, go for it, but eat the elephant one bite at a time”
.
In the work, the couple completes each other, to him the breeding part plus customers and to her the manufacture and the diversification of the products.
Place for transmission
Today, the farm has 5000 ducks, employs 5 employees and sells foie gras, duck breasts but also other very French products such as blood sausage or cassoulet.
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After 20 years of hard work, the couple plans to hand over without leaving the region.
The farm is officially for sale, but they want to take their time and make sure that the buyers will have the same vision of things and adhere to the values of responsible farming and the transmission of a culinary heritage.
They also want to accompany them in their first year.
Notice to amateurs, from France and Navarre!
More and more business leaders
Efforts in Quebec to promote gender parity are bearing fruit in the field of management or business creation.
Women are now present and at the highest level in the economic landscape, and they are more and more creators of societies.
The Quebec Entrepreneurial Index
survey
carried out each year by the Fondation de l'entrepreneurship had already indicated for several years the quasi-parity between men and women among new entrepreneurs.
The 2020 index shows that the pandemic will have accentuated this aspect in favor of women.
The rate of new owners among women exceeded that of men for the first time: 17.3% against 10.0%.
100,000 French people are settled in Canada.
Le Figaro