I don't know, I hope Canadians are still connected to the land enough that this isn't a problem for y'all. But I have this recurring problem in the USA: I tell kids that the only gear they are 100% positively required to bring to the job is a pair of boots. real boots.
one reason for this is the occasional requirement that we wear steel-toe boots on a given site, which I find rather silly and impractical and, well, this isn't the thread for that. I explain to people that they have to have boots, so when we go to a steel-toe required site, it will at least look like each person has met the requirement.
I explain that boots are usually made of leather, and have an independent sole for the heel, not a single long flat sole, and are, well, boots. I'm not sure how to explain it much more than that.
and invariably after five minutes of explaining other various reasons why we wear real boots, and not just at the steel-toe sites, kids show up wearing "hiking shoes" which are really just some kind of foo-foo tennis shoe invariably in the color of brown, you know, because that is the color of hiking, right?
I think sometimes this is because young people today have possibly never seen boots? the people that wear the hiking shoes sometimes seem genuinely surprised that those aren't boots.