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I've found an interest in designing electronics, but i'm having trouble finding a place to buy parts (resistors, transistors, etc.) in Canada.

The best site I've found so far is SparkFun Electronics, but they're based in Colorado and i live near Toronto, so between international shipping and currency conversion it gets pretty expensive.

Another almost-helpful company was Future Electronics (Toronto-based). They sell capacitors for ten to a cent, but you have to buy 50000 of them.


So, anyone know a good place to get parts? I'm just starting with electronics here, so i hope someone can help.

Sorry, I don't know of any good sites to get parts, but I would like to ask you a question.

How are you learning? (College, Internet, a specific site, friend, etc.)

Internet, and there's a bit of electronics in my high school physics course. So far mostly sparkfun.com.


I've found a couple of places to get stuff: Lee's Electronics (Vancouver) is good for passives, HVW Technologies is good for microcontrollers/dev stuff, and BG Micro (Texas somewhere) is good for just about anything (shipping is expensive but it's still cheaper than many places locally).

Does RadioShack ship to Canada?

I think so, but i'm trying to avoid buying from the US because of shipping charges, currency conversion, duty, and i don't even know if electronics components can be shipped across the border bc of the chemicals some of them contain.

In Canada we have "Radioshack Dealers" which sell Radioshack stuff but it's far more expensive than buying from BG or Lee's bc every part comes in its own private cardboard package which costs twice as much to manufacture as the part.

My Dad did this as a kid and he says there's a place in Toronto we could try. He knows where it is but he can't remember the name.

Try these places if you haven't already.

Thats's a handy list.

I found this helped too: http://members.shaw.ca/roma/suppliers.html