Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

Regrets

November 19, 2024

(Draft)

A SUNNY DAY IN MAY

(Abbreviated from Shooting the Messenger,  Boreal Books)

Every morning, if the sun was shining, for a few hours the corridor in front of the small beige cell where I sat would be flooded with sunlight from the east facing windows in the section further down the hall where the bosses had their offices. I was staring into the brilliant May sunshine flooding the usually gloomy corridor when Bruce came running in.

"Do you have the 15 cents I loaned you for the bus the other day," he asked.

Bruce more than lived up to the stereotype of the penny-pinching Scot—in other ways he was not the archetype at all. He was fastidious to the extreme. Some can't see the forest for the trees; Bruce could not see the trees for the leaves.

Bruce and I were left much on our own when my first boss at Foreign Affairs, John Turley, accepted a posting as Chief Financial Officer to the London High Commission and Bruce's boss, the head of Systems Administration accepted another assignment or retired, I don’t know, but he too was no longer available.

They both became unavailable at a critical juncture in the implementation of Full Telegraphic Input of Financial Data. Bets were that it would be cancelled because testing and training on the new system was taking too long and posts were complaining. At this stage posts were somewhat overwhelmed with having to maintain the current financial reporting system and having to send additional information to Ottawa via our global communication network to allow us to iron out the kinks in the new system.

The information they were sending also allowed us to test their understanding of the new procedures to be followed once the old system was abandon and the new one took over.

It is difficult enough to train staff on a new system when they’re in the same building, imagine what it’s like when most of the people you have to train are mostly citizens (locally engaged staff) of another country. That is more than one hundred countries and twenty-four different time zones.

Bruce and I spent a summer and many more months, at 125 Sussex, working 14 hour days, and weekends getting staff around the world to prepare and transmit operational financial data in a manner that the central computer in Ottawa could process.

It was crunch-time when Bruce and I were asked to meet with Dave Gordon, the director with overall responsibility for the Full Telegraphic Input project.

"When can we go ahead with full telegraphic input of financial data?" he asked.

Gordon was asking us when the Department could abandon the old way of reporting financial information altogether. If the new electronic way of transmitting and managing financial information did not work as predicted after the old way of doing things was abandoned, it would be chaos, but not unmanageable chaos.

Except for a few posts, Warsaw in Eastern Europe, Addis Ababa in Africa and a handful of others who could present problems (which I felt we could easily handle) I was in favour of going ahead as soon as possible. Bruce wanted to wait until every posts had achieved perfection. A laudable but unrealistic goal.

Bruce was not into taking risk no matter how miniscule—no McDuff or Macbeth was he.

Gordon emphasized that the entire project was in jeopardy if we did not go ahead soon. Bruce would not budge.

At the end of a rather animated discussion between Bruce and me, I asked him: “Would you rather have an assured failure than risk an almost certain success?” The usually soft-spoken Bruce shouted his emphatic "YES!" I recommended taking a chance on success.

Gordon made his decision. We would go ahead with full telegraphic input of financial data the following month—ready or not. Bruce did not express any further misgivings. Somebody else would be blamed if things did not go as planned.

We went live the next month and the rest is history.

An ambitious, daring, innovative project to get a handle on the Department’s expenditures was a resounding success; a success due, in large measure, to Bruce and I (and Dave Gordon who as project manager had the most to lose but stayed the course) who rose to the challenge and saved the day when others, perhaps fearing a disaster with which they did not want to be associated, took their leave.

Getting back to Bruce and his 15 cents. He was almost beside himself. He was literally shaking as I reached into a pocket and found a dime and a nickel.

"Yes, I’ve got it," I said, and gave them to him.

Without saying another word, he ran out the door just seconds before two security guards showed up.

"Please come with us," one of the guards said.

The Foreign Affairs complex is comprised of three low-rise buildings (Towers A, B and C) which are linked by a large cavernous reception area. My little beige cell was on the ground floor of Tower C.

I was escorted down a long corridor that opened onto the reception area. We crossed the vast lobby where curious visitors waiting at the central reception desk looked on and embarrassed acquaintances exiting from the ground-floor cafeteria looked the other way.

Our destination was Tower A (the tallest of the three towers), the tower where the really important people had their offices.

We took the elevator to the floor where Canada’s former ambassador to Belgrade (then the capital of Yugoslavia, today the capital of Serbia), Assistant Deputy Minister, Personnel Branch, J.G. (Jim) Harris conducted his business. Ambassador Harris was between diplomatic assignments keeping busy in Ottawa until he could return to the job he was trained for.

An important and pressing piece of business for the Ambassador that day was firing me. Somehow it seems appropriate that it was an ambassador on temporary assignment in Ottawa who would officially put an end to a nasty piece of business.

With me standing in front of him, Ambassador Harris read a formal proclamation of my crimes.

Sir,

The senior management of the Department has carefully reviewed all facts pertaining to your conduct during the period of March 21, 1985 and April 9, 1985.

The most serious crime, that of alleged insubordination led the short list of accusations:

During this period:

You have neglected to submit to instructions from your superiors to begin work immediately on the project which was assigned to you namely the preparation of the report on currency fluctuation. In spite of instructions from your superiors you did not produce any work as part of this project which you had been assigned and that during the entire period from March 21 to April 9.

The seventeen day period in question straddled the Easter weekend, and included two statutory holidays, and the three days I was on sick leave. I was, in effect, being accused of being insubordinate for eight days, they just wanted to make it appear longer. If I was insubordinate at all, it was the eight months I was confined to my little beige cell with an impossible task.

On a number of occasions, you have disobeyed your supervisor's orders not to read newspapers, magazines or other materials not directly related to the project which you have been assigned.

Of all the constraints put on me during the time in my little beige cell the restriction on reading was the hardest to endure. I admit that on a few occasions it became unbearable and I did sneak a peek at The Ottawa Citizen. As to the magazine I was spotted reading, it was PC Magazine, the computer industry's leading magazine on the micro-computer revolution.

The third indictment is proof that the first accusation, that of insubordination, was exaggerated. The period of alleged misconduct in this accusation is actually contained within the first.

During your absence from work from April 2, 1985 until April 9 1985 you neglected to submit to a demand from your superiors that you call in at the beginning of each working day.

For a supervisor to request an employee to call him every day, while he is on legitimate sick leave, to tell him that he is sick was unheard of and beyond the pale. When the guards came for me, I had more than three months of unused sick leave.

After Ambassador Harris finished reading my list of crimes against her majesty's government, I was escorted out of 125 Sussex. A poster with my picture and description was put up in a conspicuous place with a warning that I was not allowed in the building without an escort.

Less than a year after proclaiming the end of my career as a public servant, Ambassador Harris returned to his diplomatic duties as Canada's High Commissioner to New Delhi.

*****

One evening, a short time before her passing, Lucette and I talked about regrets. She said she had none. I did, one of them being that losing my job and having to start over meant she was subjected to unnecessary hardship and debilitating uncertainty until I got back on my feet.

At the worst of times, and even as her world was closing in on her, she never complained about our life together, and that night was no different. She reached out and placed one hand on top of mine, looked at me with those soft blue eyes, and said, "Don't be sad; that doesn't matter. What matters is that during my life with you, I have always felt loved. What more could a woman ask for?"

A toast to us on the occasion of our 25th Wedding Anniversary

Two regrets I never divulged were about girlfriends to whom I abruptly said goodbye. I broke up with Glenna after attending her graduation. Following the dinner and dance, rather than drive to our special place where we would kiss and make-out, I drove her home and told her it was over. Was I afraid about what could happen next, and convinced that our relationship had no future deciding that someone else should be the first? I don’t know!

The way I behaved, and not talking things over, remains a lasting regret as does the way I ended my relationship with Margaret. She would fly to Ottawa from Windsor to visit me after I made the city my home. After I decided I was marrying Lucette, I simply packed the clothes she kept in my apartment and mailed them to her with a note that said “I’m sorry.”

Returning to my apartment, after driving her to the airport after her last visit, I found a note she left behind: “I think am falling in love with you all over again.” When I wrote my own note, I felt a twinge of satisfaction that she might feel the pain I felt when I found her in bed with Rakesh; a twinge of satisfaction for a lifetime of regret. Not worth it!

Then, there is the death of a young woman, when I was a young man living across the hall from her, whose suicide I should have anticipated.

Of all my regrets there is one I consider poetic justice, which makes it even worse. I was working at the Energy Supplies Allocation Board (ESAB) when I came back from lunch and she wasn’t there. "Where is she?" I asked Arthur. When he told me, I only felt a twinge of remorse. That would change. It wasn't my decision, after all. It wasn't even Art's. I had told Art, who had told the chairman, who had told Art what to do, or so Art told me. Only years later would I fully appreciate the pain and humiliation I must have caused.

To cap it all, a few months ago, a beautiful 30-something woman I had just met wanted us to spend time together. I was putting the finishing touches to Fade to Black - Triumph of the Irrational  and worried that if one thing led to another I might not get it done, I declined. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want her to give me a reason to live, who knows?

One last regret—a minor one you might say, considering… but you would be wrong. A regret made even worse by my doctor's observation that the type of activity I feared would interfered with completing my legacy— now a done thing with the publishing of Fade to Black would not have a caused my aneurism to burst before its time.