Chapter Six:
Forty to Fifty:
1980 – 1990:
About the Trappings of Rank:
In 1980 I sent my Mum and Dad plane tickets and invited them to visit. Once they’d had a chance to get over their jet lag I bundled them into my T-bird and drove them across town to tour my empire. I drove through the parking lot and pulled up by the freight entrance. The guard at a high window recognised my Bird and pressed a button to open the huge door so that I could drive through to my private parking space in the basement.
As though we’d rehearsed it everybody we passed said “Good Morning Sir,” or “Good morning, Mr. Daniels.” The guards did everything except salute; I think everybody in the building knew that the Boss was out to impress his Mum and Dad and they all did their bit to help. In my spacious office I got them settled and my secretary brought tea for three. My Dad asked “Do all these people work for you?” I told him “Just under a thousand people work for me, but only half of them work here in Ottawa.”
Later I took them to tour two of my bigger plants, at Statistics Canada (45 employees) and Agriculture Canada (38 employees). Then we went for a late lunch at a penthouse restaurant looking down on the city. My Mum was quite tired after that so we drove home along the magnificent Ottawa River Parkway. I could see that she was pleased.
My brother told me later that as soon as they got back home to Doncaster my Dad was almost knocking on strangers’ doors to tell them about his son’s incredible success in Canada. Closing in on my 40th birthday, I’d finally done something which met with his approval.
About the Black Spot:
When I’d arrived at CGPB in 1966 I’d been asked to complete a security questionnaire. On the covering memo was a handwritten note saying “Explain why you arrived in Canada on a Russian ship.” I completed the survey and sent it back with a handwritten reply: “After due deliberation I thought it was probably too far to swim.” This resulted in a visit from the Security Chief and after I’d explained that other vessels were held up indefinitely by a labour dispute, we became friends.
Following my appointment as Director, OPB, he paid me a visit and gave me a white plastic square, about three inches each side. In the middle of the square was a solid black circle about two and a half inches in diameter. I asked him what I was expected to do with it. He told me: “It’s your universal parking permit. Put it on the dashboard where it’s clearly visible through the windscreen. Park anywhere you want, you’ll never get a ticket.” I told him I had no idea such things were available. He said: “They’re not. We occasionally make one in our engineering shop. We’ve been driving cops and meter maids nuts for years with these things. As far as they know you could be Ottawa’s answer to the ‘Godfather’ or visiting royalty but none of them have ever had the guts to give it a ticket. We get enquiries now and again, and we say we’ve no idea what these things really are, but we’ve heard that they’re only given to the Prime Minister’s current mistresses.” I used the black spot for several years and never got a ticket on it.
I got a kick out of thinking that if Zed were still working at R&IE he would now be working for me. I hoped that he was somehow still aware of what was happening in his old stomping ground, and that he was pleased with my progress.
About my Domestic Situation:
By 1979 there was little left of my marriage. Helen was constantly angry about something, but I never truly knew what it was. Her screaming fits were legendary; people told me that she could be heard streets away. She screamed at me, at our two boys or at nothing at all. She often spent nights away from home and gave no explanation on her return. Looking back I know that my Depression by this time was debilitating and destructive and I must have been dreadfully difficult to live with. Since neither Helen nor I understood what was happening, my behaviour must often have seemed surly and childish.
I had been unfaithful on several occasions with several different women, and by 1979 the marriage was beyond repair.
When the split came, despite having been expecting it for some time, I was devastated. I was like the cancer patient who is told that a limb must be removed; even realising that the surgery is needed if he is to survive, even knowing that the limb is of no further use, there is still nothing good about losing an arm or a leg. But I had no doubts that the greater part of my pain was due to my deteriorating mental condition.
In chapter three I told of how my romantic encounters had taught me four important facts about women. My affairs of the seventies taught me one more: Women (some women) make the very best best friends. During this period of my life I turned increasingly to Marion.
I’d met Marion within a few weeks of moving to Westcliffe. She was the membership secretary of the local tennis club, which Helen and I joined soon after moving in. Marion became our baby sitter and my doubles tennis partner, and I was attracted to her from the first meeting. Her lovely trim figure and long dark hair blew me away, and when she looked into my eyes I was fifteen years old again, tongue tied and shell shocked. But this was the seventies; casual sexual encounters were commonplace and other men in the tennis club assumed that I was only interested in such a relationship. They told me that Marion was the ‘Ice Queen’ of the club and not interested in such things (meaning that they had tried and failed) but I liked and respected her too much to risk our friendship by making some foolish juvenile move in that direction.
When I was so badly shaken by Helen’s departure there were times when I dropped into a deep dark hole of despair, and had to get out of the office. Then as now, when under stress my illness caused me to act like a spoiled eight year old child, needing comfort and protection, or possibly a short, sharp slap. At such times I would call Marion and she would always come to find me. We would walk together along the banks of the Ottawa river and I would begin to feel better. Simply being in her presence calmed me. It still does.
How could I not fall in love with her?
About seeking Help:
There was no longer any denying, even to myself, that I was mentally ill and that I needed treatment, but before I could bring myself to seek it there was the matter of my paralysing fear of all things medical. I had the phone number of the therapist who had been recommended by my GP, and I called for an appointment.
My first meeting with Dr. S was very pleasant, totally calm and non-threatening. He asked me a lot of questions, many of which seemed to me to be quite irrelevant, and then told me that there was no doubt that I was clinically depressive, quite seriously so, and had been for a long time. He told me that the ‘cure’ would not come easily and might take years of therapy; unfortunately he could not take on a long term project due to current commitments. I said that I wasn’t looking for treatment at this time and explained about my fear of medical processes. He asked another series of questions and said that given the limited amount of time he could give me he would not be able to dig deep enough to find the cause of my phobia; but it was possible that I could be successfully desensitised, which should work well enough for my purposes, and we started the process the following week.
At my first session Dr. S took a hypodermic needle from his desk drawer and placed it on the desk where I could not fail to notice it. He told me to ignore it, and we spoke of other things. He asked a lot of questions about my father and told me that my relationship with him was probably a factor in my own mental problems. At the end of the session he asked me to pick up the needle and place it back in the drawer. Trying hard to look cool I picked it up and dropped it into the drawer. John Wayne on the outside, Woody Allen on the inside.
Six weeks later, at the end of our session, he filled the hypodermic and gave me a vitamin shot. I almost skipped on the way back to my office. I was ready to move on to the next step. And so I did; twelve years later.
About the departure of Henry:
In 1979 I was ‘borrowed’ by the Provincial Government of British Columbia to draw up a plan for modernisation of the equipment and processes at the B.C. Provincial Queen’s Printer in Victoria. I arrived to find that the situation in BC was almost identical to that which I’d found at the CGPB, which made my job very easy. Back in Ottawa to write my report Henry took me aside and said that if anyone should ask me about the possibility of hiring someone to manage their modernisation program, for example someone who had recently done the same thing on a Federal level, he would be happy to fly out and talk to them about it. By coincidence, the position of BC Provincial Queen’s Printer was vacant at that time. I got the drift.
I completed my report and flew to BC to present it to a panel of departmental ministers. After everybody had left except the panel’s chairman, who was my contact point for the project, I suggested that a quick and easy way to solve the problem of implementing the changes might be to talk to Henry. After all he had recently finished doing exactly the same thing for the CGPB. I said I had the impression that Henry was looking for a new challenge and might be persuaded to take on the project for them. It couldn’t hurt to give him a call, I said, and in my view there wasn’t a better qualified individual anywhere in the world.
Henry departed for BC a few weeks later, and I considered the debt I owed him paid, at least in part.
About the return of the Bully:
The employees of the Government Printing Bureau were over 90% French, while Management was over 90% English. This imbalance was already a sore point with many of the tradesmen when I arrived in ‘66, and by 1980 it had become a very hot political issue. The Director of the Main Plant and the Plant Engineer were Francophones, but this was not enough for our political masters. With the imminent departure of Henry it was made very clear that his successor must be a French Language speaker from the Province of Quebec. A person who’s mother tongue was English was not acceptable, however fluently he spoke French.
A suitable candidate, Monsieur Jacques, was found and hired. His first act was to recruit two ‘assistants’, one blonde and one brunette, promote them up a level or two and set them up with offices close to his own. The young women were then sent through the building carrying orders and bringing back information. They were the subject of gossip, offensive comments and smutty jokes on their travels within CGPB, but must have felt that the bargain they had struck was worthwhile, for they stayed in their jobs.
For a few weeks he left me alone. Since I had taken the job as director my branch had improved efficiency and morale, and my annual performance reviews had been outstanding; nevertheless, Jacques issued orders for “improvements” which were totally unnecessary along with the instruction that they were to be implemented at once. The next day one of the assistants came to my office for news of my progress in implementing Jacques’ orders and when I ignored her, messages came back with the comment that ‘insubordination will not be tolerated.’
The early morning meetings which Henry had used to brief his directors were continued, but were held even earlier. They were held totally in French, which was spoken so fast and filled with so many slang terms that I was unable to follow. When I asserted my right to speak in the official language of my choice I was effectively left out of the discussions, but still required to attend.
Jacques was overheard telling a visitor that his management style was ‘management by fear’.
With hindsight, I don’t fully understand why I allowed myself to be bullied by this man. In my experience it was rare indeed to find a bully who would stand and fight in the face of retaliation by his prey. It would have been an easy matter to file a harassment grievance against Jacques and I would have received support from everyone involved with the possible exception of Jacques’ two ‘assistants’. But still I did nothing.
In 1982 at a discrete and clandestine meeting I was invited to join a ‘Jacques must go’ cartel of senior officers who were about to co-sign a letter to the ADM (Assistant Deputy Minister) the Department’s second highest ranking officer. We decided that we should first meet with the Queen’s Printer, a very fine gentleman and Jacques’ boss. I was the unanimous choice to present our case.
However, one of the conspirators came to me before the meeting and backed out, and I had doubts about the backbones of the rest. I met with the QP as planned, but instead of presenting the view of the group I requested a transfer from the Bureau. The QP said he’d expected that after four years in the job I’d be ready for a change, a new challenge, and that with my record of outstanding performance reviews I should be able to choose any vacant EX01 level position in the department. I thanked him and told him in all truth that it had been a pleasure and privilege to serve under him.
My experience with bullies had taught me nothing; I did the same thing I’d always done: I ran away.
The concept of an executive cadre within the Federal Government was based on mobility. Any EX01 could be posted into any EX01 level vacancy with a minimum of paperwork or delay. There were vacancies at my level but before choosing one I asked to be ‘parked’ for a while. This gave me an office, a phone, access to the information I needed to choose my next job, and whatever time I needed – within reason – to make my choice. I moved out of the Bureau the following week and took a small office in the HR area.
I did not stay in touch with events at the Bureau after I left. When I bumped into a colleague from CGPB and traded news I heard that morale was very bad there. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I heard that Jacques had left. Nobody seemed to know where he’d gone or why. His assistants had been transferred back to their old positions at their old levels. That was the last I ever heard of him.
About Marion and my New Family:
In November 1979 Marion moved in with me. She brought her two children, a son aged 7 and a daughter, 9. Helen had not wanted custody of our boys, so the family also included my two sons, aged 9 and 11. The children all knew each other; Marion had been their baby sitter since they were very small, and it was not unusual on Saturdays for me to round up all the kids, load them into my T-bird and treat them to burgers, fries and ice cream at the local MacDonalds. The boys all loved these treats and cajoled me into taking the turns fast enough to make the tires scream.
In 1982 Marion and I were married at a small ceremony in Ottawa City Hall attended by several close friends and our daughter. Our sons had made it clear that they preferred school to ceremony. We all went to our favourite restaurant, where a special meal had been prepared for us. The next day we threw a big party for our friends and neighbours to spread the news that we were now official.
In 1985 we moved into a five bedroom, three bathroom split level ranch house on a large lot in Kanata, a western suburb of Ottawa.
About Program Evaluation:
I didn’t stay parked for very long. One morning I was sitting with my feet on the desk, reading a dog-eared paperback when an old friend stopped by. I’d worked with Dave at the CGPB a few years back. He had left to set up a new branch, Program Evaluation. He asked whether I knew anything about it, and when I said ‘no’ he told me the basics. An Evaluation was very similar to an Audit, but while an audit asked the question ‘Are you following the rules?’ an evaluation asked ‘Are you doing what you were set up to do, and are you doing it effectively and efficiently?’
He said “I hear you have a habit of sticking your head into hornet’s nests; I have a huge one, if you’re interested.” “Well I’m not going to get a better offer than that today,” I said, closing my book.
I was given a smallish office on the 15th floor with a view of the Parliament buildings across the river, quite possibly one of the best views in Ottawa. Dave’s branch had two evaluation units, and I headed one of them. He had been running the branch for nearly three years, and had yet to produce a report from either unit.
Before I’d even found the coffee machine Dave came to see me about the ‘hornet’s nest’ evaluation which was a long way behind schedule and for political reasons had suddenly become urgent. He said that instead of handing the study over to my team, which would have been normal practice, he and I would do this study. The subject of the evaluation was the Supply Centre, a vast warehouse which bought, stored and distributed office supplies to Departments and Agencies across the National Capital Region. Similar warehouses supplied other cities, but Dave and I decided that a detailed study of the Ottawa area would serve to represent the whole. I never found out why the study had suddenly jumped to the front burner, but I heard hints that there had been pressure on our Minister from commercial sources, who claimed that they could provide a better service. The policy of the department had always been to provide an internal service only when there was no suitable commercial source of supply.
After thinking about the best way this study could be done fast I borrowed Dave’s secretary and his admin officer and sent them both on a ‘virtual’ shopping trip. They had three imaginary shopping baskets: one for normal office supplies – scotch tape, pens and pencils, etc. A second basket was for larger, more expensive supplies which might be needed once per year, say, or even less often; a slide projector, a wall clock, this type of thing. The third basket was to contain supplies needed to set up a new office; desks, chairs, etcetera. They were to fill all of the baskets at the Supply Center and then at two local commercial suppliers of the same goods. Scrupulous records of all virtual spending were kept, along with details such as estimated delivery time (for items which could not be taken with the buyer), number of out-of-stock and back ordered items, the availability of alternatives if the requested item was not available, any difficulties encountered in using the facility, etcetera. When all the data was in I had a very thick file.
We took the finished work to our Director General, Gordon, who refused to believe my conclusions until we produced the charts and the supporting data. Gordon knew the DG of the Supply Centre well and he knew what this report could do to him. Gordon said to Dave, “There will be blood on the floor if you present this. Who in your shop is going to do it?” “Barry will do it” Dave said.
I presented my report at the next meeting of the Deputy Minister’s Committee. I put up my first chart showing a list of the data we had sought and why we wanted it. I gave a quick overview of how we did what we did, and then hit the costs. A box of staples cost 55cents at the supply center while the identical box from the same maker sold for 40 cents and 45 cents at two local stores. Pencils, one dozen, H.B., 30 cents from Supply centre, 25 cents at both shops for the identical pack. Photos of the two items were pasted on to my charts.
I flipped the charts to show the section on large item purchases. “When it came to the bigger items, desks for example, it was hard to find the same makes and models, but we did find desks of near identical size, shape, construction and quality, 29% cheaper when bought from private sector suppliers. The report contains photos for comparison. The bottom line?” I flipped the chart to the last page, which showed how much more it would cost an average customer to shop at the Supply Centre, or conversely, how much money could be saved by ignoring it.
The DM looked ready to kill someone, but fortunately it wasn’t me. He stared daggers at the DG Supply, who looked ready to kill someone and it was me. The DM said “How come this chap (he had no idea who I was) has to come here and tell me this? Don’t your people go out now and then to make sure your prices stay competitive!” He directed his dagger-eyes at me. “Do you have any idea what the department would look like if this report hits the press?” I didn’t answer; he didn’t expect me to. “Who do you report to?” he asked me. “DG, Evaluation and Audit” I told him, indicating Gordon, who was on the committee. “We’ll discuss this!” the DM told Gordon. “Young man,” he said – he still had no idea who I was -- “No copy of this report nor any word of the contents must go beyond this room. Leave your notes and charts here when you go.” In other words, bugger off. I buggered off.
Gordon caught up with me at the elevator. “Sorry,” I said “But we knew there would be bloodshed.” “Sorry?” Gordon asked. “Well I’m not. I’ve been waiting for something like this out of Dave’s shop for three years. They’re going to sit up and pay attention to the Program Evaluation Branch next time you knock on someone’s door.” He gave me a sly, evil looking grin and trotted back into the meeting.
Between 1983 and 1988 Program Evaluation suffered through a number of drastic changes. By 1988 it was part of the Policy and Evaluation branch and I was the Director of the branch -- and its sole employee. I had no staff, not even a secretary. I had a budget of $3 million and I was expected to hire consultants as required to perform the studies, which at least gave me lots of free lunches as a guest of local consultants who were after a chunk of my $3 million. My job was 99% paperwork and 100% boring. I spent my time devising schedules and budgets for projects which I knew would never happen.
About Mentoring:
My boss at that time decided that Evaluation Officer positions would make fine training opportunities for up and coming young women. It would give them good exposure to all areas of the department and the chance to demonstrate their abilities and strut their stuff to the top ranks of departmental management – not to mention a chance to face down the Deputy Minister and his top level committee once in a while. From that time on I had several brilliant young women assigned to my tender care, and was expected to teach them what they needed to know in order to shine. And they shone, every one of them.
About The Veneer:
In 1985 I submitted a short story to the Toronto Star’s annual contest, and it placed in the top 50, which resulted in publication and a $50 cheque. In 1986 I hit the top 50 again. In ’87 my story ‘with Friends like these’ competed against 5,400 entries from every province, every state in the US and most countries. The Star editor told me that several well known writers had submitted stories, some in their own names and others using a nom-de-plume. The reason for such a huge response was that the first prize for the contest was a state-of-the-art Olivetti computer system complete with printer and document feeder as well as the latest word processing software, a package with a retail value of over $9,300 which was probably #1 on any writer’s Christmas wish list. My entry won first prize and I had another fifteen minutes of fame, including my picture in glorious colour on the front page of the Toronto Star.
In 1988 the government announced the formation of a Task Force to examine the status of women employed in the Canadian Civil Service and to identify any obstacles to the advancement of women, with recommendations for removal of whatever obstacles were unearthed. The Task Force needed a Director of Research. The original plan was to hire a woman; I heard that a professor from a noted university had been the front runner, but then someone had suggested that there was a man in the Department of Supply and Services who had a reputation for hard hitting social research, and who had recently proved himself to be a world class writer. The Secretary of the Treasury Board called the Minister of Supply, and the deed was done.
Later, when the work was over, I took the show on the road to tell what we had learned. The most common first question was “Why did they not find a woman to be Director of Research?” After hearing this once too often I took to replying “They didn’t specify male or female, they simply asked for the best.”
The actual work was very straightforward and little different from a regular program evaluation. We identified the questions to which we needed answers, the data we needed in order to address these questions, then how to go about obtaining this data. We planned a questionnaire survey, but this has the serious limitation that most people who respond to such surveys do so because they have an axe to grind, and many who do respond will hide their true feelings if they suspect that responses may be traced back to them. In the end we settled for a number of studies, in which the findings from one could be used to balance the shortcomings of another. Being a social research program a lot of the feedback we obtained was anecdotal.
I spread my million dollar research budget around, often to consultants I had dealt with before and trusted to do a good job. While they were off data gathering I settled down to do what I did best – play with the numbers. What was the proportion of men to women in the Civil Service? Where were these women? Were earnings comparable to men with similar responsibilities? When the data started to come in it painted a dismal picture. The Government had claimed for years that this particular issue had long since been settled, and that women now represented half of all government employees. This was so, but what it did not say was that the women were largely confined to two categories, essentially secretaries and clerks and even in these areas women were concentrated on the bottom levels of the category while men dominated at the top.
The Head of the Task Force used this fact to derive the title for the final report “Beneath the Veneer”, reflecting the fact the equality of opportunity in the civil service was only a thin veneer, beneath which women were compressed to the lowest levels and pay grades, and only rare women managed to break through the ‘glass ceiling’ which limited their career progression. The report was well received and all department heads pledged to implement the recommendations and balance the books. Twenty five years later, to my knowledge, no follow up study has ever been carried out.