Roots

Roots' own site puts it plainly: "Proudly Canadian for Over 50 Years." Their official story: in the 1960s, two friends, Michael Budman and Don Green, met at Camp Tamakwa in Algonquin Park and fell for the Canadian wilderness. "It was a twelve-hour trip by train, bus and boat to Camp Tamakwa in the heart of Canada's wilderness that would change everything," they say. In 1973 they launched Roots with the "negative-heel" shoe — a heel lower than the toe, designed to improve posture — and it sold out within the month.

Roots frames its name around the idea that "your feet really are your roots... connected to the ground like a tree." Their beaver logo is an intentional Canadian symbol chosen to represent resourcefulness and community. Today the company says it runs 115 stores nationwide with over 2,000 Canadian employees, and its Toronto Leather Factory has been run by "generations of family craftspeople" since day one — VP Karl Kowalewski describes his father Jan as "a master shoemaker who instilled in us the importance of quality and ethics... there are no shortcuts."