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High-tech refugees picnic and pine Many would go home -- stock options permitting By SIMON AVERY - National Post |
| SILICON VALLEY - It was a spontaneous enough gesture that didn't seem to
leave anyone embarrassed. One hundred and sixty-six Canadians in a large circle rose together, put down their lunch plates and softly sang the national anthem. Our national anthem, in an American park, three days before U.S. Independence Day. Plenty has been written about the brain drain to the United States, especially pronounced in the field of technology. But for the record, this past Canada Day in Silicon Valley many true patriots who'd let opportunity sweep them across the border proved they hadn't been entirely washed away. For the Canadian worker heading stateside, the appeal to relocate to northern California is especially powerful. Sun shines 300 days a year down the Silicon Valley peninsula and summer stretches out for six months. The region is crowded and the infrastructure overburdened, but it is a long way from the concrete jungle that marks Los Angeles. Silicon Valley highways are better defined by the underground sprinkler systems and blossoming jasmine and oleander along their medians than road-rage shootings. To the north of this technology haven lies Napa Valley, a culinary Disneyland for grown-ups. Westward, on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Pacific coastline rivals the beauty of the Maritimes. And three hours drive east, the Sierra Nevada mountain range boasts giant sequoia groves, winter skiing and the magnificent Yosemite National Park. Given all these regional attributes, it's not surprising there were a few self-confessed "climate refugees" in the Canada Day crowd. But 20 cases of donated Labatt Blue led to some honest soul-searching, and many talked of moving "home" once their next round of stock options vested. A few gossiped quite enviously about colleagues who'd recently parlayed their local success into great jobs back in Canada. NAFTA toddlers, born under the Stars and Stripes to parents with annually renewable work visas, sported the Maple Leaf. They may not have known what it symbolized, but several showed an instinctive understanding, playing in the large ice-filled beer cooler rather than in the warm sand of the volleyball court. Susan Chung, event organizer and self-proclaimed "chief moose," found a trustworthy auditor in the crowd to legitimize a raffle for a box of Coffee Crisps, donated by a sympathetic Torontonian who'd heard the distinctly Canadian treat was unavailable in California. In the mingling that followed, a few entrepreneurs made "elevator pitches" to venture capitalists and other potential investors. Engineers and programmers, some squinting in the daylight, spoke of 70-hour work weeks building new multi-billion-dollar network components or creating the next round of services on the Web. But ultimately, most of the talk resonated from somewhere far across the border, on subjects such as hockey, distant memories of the University of Waterloo, and how to handle state troopers and other wound-up, gun-toting Americans. The picnic proved to be an afternoon of self-recognition in a culture that moves much too fast to note the tremendous impact outsiders from all over the world are having on the area. The timing was particularly good, given that 10 days later a group of Canucks would steal Silicon Valley business headlines with what will become the largest technology takeover in history, if regulators approve the deal. JDS Uniphase Corp., one of Canada's most-valued high-tech companies, agreed to pay US$41-billion in stock for San Jose, Calif.-based SDL Inc., a rival maker of fibre-optic equipment. Since its creation through a merger last year, JDS Uniphase has run its corporate headquarters in San Jose, but maintains its largest pool of employees in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean. Local U.S. media reports said the deal will vault JDS Uniphase to sacred corporate Silicon Valley ground, right next to Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Oracle Corp. That's high praise indeed, but none of it is directed at Canada. Success stories here are sucked up into the great American dream machine, regardless of where they originate. Even worse, many are just ignored. Overshadowed in the U.S. communications equipment market for years by Lucent Technologies and Cisco, Nortel Networks -- one of Canada's other great success stories -- was the tech equivalent of the third tenor nobody could name. A multi-billion-dollar Silicon Valley acquisition of its own two years ago has since helped enlarge Nortel's U.S. profile, particularly among investors. But for the foreseeable future, if Canadians choosing to stay in Silicon Valley want recognition as Canadians, they're going to have to throw a few more picnics in the park. |