GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

63. Busy and very strange months

I HAVE A SMALL DIARY, 40 PAGES OF NOTES, about happenings during 1986 in CNHQ Public Affairs and Advertising, or Corporate Information Centre, or Corporate Communications -- our name kept changing. After reading through it several times in 2015-16 I think the reason why it makes no sense is because the department had a collective nervous breakdown but we in it were spinning too fast to recognize that.

En route to privatization, parts of the company were renamed, people were moved from one to another or fired, titles and phone numbers changed, gossip rampaged unchecked.

Consultants hired to redesign our floor according to new reporting lines had no sense of the railway's culture so they first produced a long survey for us to complete.

Another firm persuaded someone that new computers would make CN more efficient, and they were delivered -- from the top down. They first appeared on the desks of men who had never touched a keyboard in their lives, but none was bought for writers at either the bi-weekly Keeping Track  (for employees and retirees), or the glossy monthly sent outside.

One day, several of us were packed and prepared to move to another floor. On the next we learned that, instead, we would occupy smaller cubicles where we were and people from other departments would move to our renamed department. My title changed from Information Officer to Communications Officer, then back again after 1000 new business cards landed on my desk.

The diary reads as though Bedlam was let loose. I didn't see it coming because Expo 86 had kept me racing toward Opening Day on May 2. Preparing the final fact sheet for press kits was difficult because men who had shown no interest in the fair now acquired Expo-related titles, which no one told me about before they flew off to Vancouver to inspect "their show".

Suddenly resignations began! People with years of service, or recently hired, came to say Goodbye, mentioning it was easy to find better jobs wherever they wanted them, right across Canada! Their CN titles and years of loyalty impressed new employers.

The Chairman wanted everyone's job description recorded. A consulting firm was hired to make our reporting easy by means of "job description interviews" (JDI). Because that firm's business was helping companies market products, their generic JDI form lacked check boxes for public relations or communications. Their closest description was "analytical qualitative research". 

I considered leaving. Writing for Keeping Track and about the reception at the Public Archives of Canada had meant dealing with the French-speaking St. Lawrence Region. Its offices were at the other end of Central Station from HQ. I invited its PR manager to lunch one day, and told him I'd like to speak French a lot more than I did at HQ. Jean-Guy said I'd be welcome as "the English function" of his office because dealing with anglophone reporters was a continuing problem there.

I didn't mention my strange premonition that I would only be with CN until 1990.

The Vancouver PR company handling CN's Expo 86 participation had to be politically correct, approved in Ottawa. A week before Opening Day the assistant vp for Expo 86 went there to meet a young woman named Chan who was starting a PR company in Vancouver, and they signed a contract.

Over lunch he talked only about a book he was writing. When finally she pointed out that she needed information and materials about CN at Expo 86 for the office she was about to fly back to Vancouver to open, he told her to phone me "to get all that".

She found my home number in a Montreal Bell Telephone directory and called after one of my 12-hour days. I was still trying to deliver the final media kit in English and French for printing, but people kept calling to say "Oh, by the way," some detail had changed.

Ms Chan had never met anyone quite like our avp86! A week before Opening Day she had no CN materials to work with!!! I had assumed that work had begun in Vancouver long before.

We understood each other instantly.

I decided to fly there ASAP carrying everything she needed. The next morning I told Roger I was going, asked the travel department to book plane tickets and four nights in CN's Hotel Vancouver, and filled a couple of cartons with stuff for Ms Chan. Our travel dept. was obviously used to dealing with managers who were terminally disorganized. The agent calmly told me how "we" would get the cartons packed properly, picked up, and checked -- clearly marked "urgent for CN" -- with my plane ticket.

"We" did exactly as she predicted.

Networks of individuals with job experience, and familiarity with each other, easily achieve things which appear impossible to outsiders. Have MBA programs been emphasizing that since they were invented? Do they even know fine points of the inner workings of really efficient businesses?

Three days before the fair's opening I began working in a modest office in downtown Vancouver with Ms Chan and her only employee, an excellent secretary. They photocopied texts I had brought, filled an Expo 86 Rolodex, and assembled their office on the fair site. I helped them set up a filing system based on action groups, as Col. Churchill had taught me at Expo 67.

While they worked I was on the phone to HQ, where Mireille, my secretary, had completed the final version of media kit #4 for Ms Chan. I answered calls referred by avp86. He had gone back to Montreal for just two days for some reason, and instructed CN's central switchboard to tell reporters using his number from media kit #3 that Ms Chan's office now had the latest information.

On the afternoon of May 1 I saw previews of CN's interactive exhibits and General Motors' fantastic The Spirit Lodge in Holavision, then quickly toured Canada Place. On May 2 Ms Chan and her secretary began their summer's work at the fair while I enjoyed a fairly quiet day in their office.

A record amount of heavy rain fell during my four-day visit so I saw Vancouver itself only during taxi rides.

In early June Ms Chan said she had tried different ways of offering avp86 a new promotional idea or a cost estimate, but never received a clear reply. What was she to do? I told her to send him a fax at the end of each Friday, reporting in point form what she had done that week, and outlining what she planned for the coming one. Then she should go ahead with her plans.

I emphasized that she and her secretary must watch for a message telling her to stop spending, and do so immediately. But she should keep sending a monthly invoice because the retainer stipulated in her contract remained firm until the fair closed in October.

She called in late August to say the stop order had just arrived.

Not long after I moved to Montreal (in Spring 1984) I'd met a handsome, white-haired Englishman. Colin and I enjoyed each other's company regularly. We hiked, cycled and cross-country skied, saw Cats at Place des Arts, jazz concerts on rue Saint-Denis, a performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture in a park with two Canadian Armed Forces cannon firing blanks.

Halfway through 1986, during a long weekend with Mom at her cottage, Colin told me that the first stage of a cancer he had warned me would appear some day, had appeared.

Dupuytren's Contracture was the inevitable result of handling certain chemicals while he earned an MA at the University of Newcastle in England. During his 30s he had learned that it usually appeared about 25 years after exposure. He was just past 50 in '86 when small bones in the palms of his hands and feet began fusing.

Colin really enjoyed working in the chemical field. What would be his last job was with Hoechst Canada, a German multi-national. His business card read "Manager development and applied research, Synthetic resins". In layman's terms, he made commercial paints behave in precise ways to meet consumer needs.

He listened carefully to my stories of life on the railway. His employer's culture was altogether different. Hoechst had clear job descriptions and reporting lines among levels. Its managers were required to be interested in their staffs, to mentor them sincerely and respond wisely if they detected trouble of any kind. He agreed that my moving to the small office of CN's St. Lawrence Region would be a good idea.

"You're dealing with too many minds that seem not to know what they're about", Colin said. "That's a frightful waste of your energy."

CHAPTER 63 of GLIMPSES -- 30