Technology and globalization is changing Canadian society. Many types of jobs are disappearing, even while newly created fields open up.
While not completely gone, it’s very difficult to still find a door to door milkman, as most people get their milk from the big supermarkets or corner stores now.
Once a common sight, drive-in movies are all but gone, blacksmithing seems like something from the distant past, lighthouses are almost entirely automated, the few that even remain.
John DeMont is a senior writer and columnist at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald newspaper in the east coast province of Nova Scotia. Author of several books, his latest looks at these slowly disappearing jobs. It’s called “ A Good Day’s Work: In pursuit of a disappearing Canada.
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John DeMont admits there’s no small amount of nostalgia in this latest book.
Certainly in started out that way in his mind, but he later came to see that all the people in these slowly disappearing trades were extremely satisfied with their work, and did not consider themselves museum pieces.
After considering all the jobs he used to know several years ago, which one almost never sees anymore, he began to do research to see if he could still find remnants of these once common jobs, and speak to the people doing them across Canada.
He managed to find several people and travelled across the country to meet them. Instead of being somewhat melancholy about doing work that was, or had been already almost entirely replaced by technology and changing commercial realities and public habits, he found something a bit surprising.
Whether working a forge and creating metal objects by hand, running a locomotive, delivering milk in the wee hours of the morning, working as a big animal veterinarian driving from distant farm to distant farm, or running one of the rare drive-in movie theatres still in operation in North America, all the people in these fading jobs all still felt useful and needed, and happy with their work.
Nonetheless, there are many jobs and skills which are disappearing in the face of globalization and technology.
What are some of the once common professions that you have noticed that seemed to have all but disappeared?
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