Chapter Seven:
Fifty to Fifty five:
1990 – 1995:
About Magic and a Miracle:
Going into my fifty-first year I was seriously mentally ill and I knew it. Winston Churchill called his Depression the ‘Black Dog’ and when he suffered from an attack he said that the Black Dog had him in its teeth. I always found his metaphor very appropriate. In my 51st year my Dog frequently had me in its teeth and shook me until my eyes threatened to pop, but even in between the dog’s attacks I was not ‘normal’. I have said that when I was depressed I reverted to the behaviour of a spoiled eight year old child but now the child was often in control and I was a captive inside listening to things he said, watching the things he did, totally unable to control events until the child and I switched back positions.
I treated my wife and daughter very badly. Local jewellery and florist shops recognised me when I was forced to apologise yet again for some childish outburst. For some reason I was never the same way with the boys; perhaps I felt safer with the two people I loved most because I knew they would still have to love me even after another outburst. But thankfully Marion had taken enough. She went to our GP and told him what was happening and how things had gone from bad to worse and were still on the way down. “Bring him in,” said the doctor. “How the devil can I bring him in if he doesn’t want to come?” Marion asked him. “He’s five feet ten, one eighty pounds, he punches holes in walls and tears doors off hinges when he’s annoyed, and he’s always annoyed.… and he’s absolutely terrified of doctors.”
Marion had no need of force. She told me what I knew deep down; that things could not go on as they were. “I want my Barry back,” she told me.
Several years back Doctor S had desensitised my fear of needles, and perhaps this small advantage allowed me to visit our GP. Marion came with me and held my hand. In less than five minutes the Doctor knew that my problems were beyond his skill to solve, and referred me to a psychiatrist working at a nearby Hospital.
By the grace of God and some unknown mechanism I had always been able to keep my Depression under control at work, but that grace had now expired. I was ill mannered and aggressive with people I met, and friends went out of their way to avoid me. I was now between jobs, having finished my two years with the Task Force, filed my report, written part of the final document and closed my office at the Treasury Board, but I hadn’t yet received my next assignment. My superiors were all delighted with my Task Force’s research program and once again I had an ‘outstanding’ performance appraisal on file so I had a lot of latitude regarding when (or even whether) I turned up for work. The timing for me to finally address my mental illness could not have been better.
I met with the Psychiatrist, a young man with a no-nonsense attitude. He asked me questions for half an hour, including several which made no sense to me; some related to my social activities; how did I like parties? Was I comfortable in crowds? Did I enjoy loud music? Did I ever drink too much? Did I ever drive too fast for road conditions, or after having drunk too much?
Eventually he gave me his diagnosis. He said that he had never met an individual as seriously disturbed as I was who could still hold down a job and raise a family – a diagnosis I was to hear more than once. He suggested it might be the best thing if I were to check in to hospital for a few days to allow a detailed examination and to try some medications in a controlled environment. I rejected this out of hand. He asked if I had any problems accepting the need for medication and I said not at all. He gave me a trial prescription for an anti-depressant and told me to take one pill on the first night, two on the second and three per day thereafter, then come back to see him in two weeks, earlier if there were adverse reactions to the medication.
The anti-depressant was a little yellow and white capsule called Aventyl; generic name, Nortriptiline. I collected the medication on the way home.
Marion and I got home shortly after noon. I was feeling very low, with little hope that the pills would work. I had been told that if I persevered I could expect some symptom relief in four to five weeks – bringing back memories of Anafranil, which had ended up in the toilet. I sat down in my Lazyboy recliner, tilted the chair back and took my first Nortriptiline. And then a miracle happened.
I have read that the sense of smell doesn’t work through the normal brain channels but connects directly to the stem, the animal brain, which is how a strange smell can transport a person directly to a far distant memory. There is a particular kitchen smell which takes me back to school, lined up ready to enter the cafeteria for dinner. The little capsule worked like that: I was suddenly on an obscure back road, on top of a hill in the early hours of the morning, gazing up at a night sky overflowing with stars and my spirit was touching paradise. I sat there, star struck, for about five seconds, and then I fell asleep.
This was not ‘sleep’ as I knew it, a brief period of unconsciousness with or without disturbing dreams. This sleep was deep, and soft, and welcoming. I drifted in a velvet darkness where there was no fear, no sadness, and then, finally, nothing at all.
I slept for four hours and when I woke the sun was shining in our home and it had banished the shadows which I’d carried within me all of my life. For all that time I had accepted that life had little to offer, little to strive for, the only reward an occasional period of satisfaction and contentment, filled with people who would stab me in the back if I failed to be vigilant at all times. But I was totally wrong. It was all in the way I had been looking at things. Life was full of joy if I could only see it, full of people who loved me, friends I could trust. And I was the most fortunate of men, for I had everything any man could ask for. Health, family, money, position, love. Especially love.
Marion curled up with me in my huge chair and she knew at once what had happened. She said “Welcome back,” and I cried and I cried and I cried and I just couldn’t stop.
Despite having snoozed away the afternoon, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow that night and woke eight hours later feeling so good that I couldn’t find a way to describe it. Gone was my lifelong insomnia, all of my sleeping problems. Gone were my late night travels. Gone was lying in bed hour after hour staring at a night-black ceiling.
But that was not all.
There was no longer a need to see Dr. S for therapy to cure my fear of medical procedures, I no longer had a fear of medical procedures. And just in time. I’d recently developed some urinary problems which required invasive hospital diagnostic tests to find out what was wrong. No problem, no worries. I also needed a six month series of weekly blood tests, but my problem had nothing to do with the needles; I had to abstain from Cabernet Sauvignon for the duration. All alcohol, actually, but it was the Cabernet that hurt.
Gone was my hypochondria. A headache was no longer a tumour on the brain, it was only a headache. A bellyache was not stomach cancer, only indigestion.
I was no longer squeamish. The condition had switched off as fast as it had long ago switched on in my biology class. Graphically illustrated medical programs became some of my favourite TV entertainment.
All of my ‘orbital’ problems had spun away into space when the black hole of my Depression was cured by a single pill.
Well, not quite. I could not be sure that my problems had been cured for all time, but I had been blind for a long time and now my eyes were opened. Nothing could spoil my joy on that day.
Over the next few months I decided to stop telling this story in the face of universal disbelief. Nobody seemed able to accept it except my wife and daughter who had watched it happen. Friends would say ‘just so long as you’re feeling better’ but their eyes said ‘pull the other leg’. Doctors smiled and told me that the drug just simply can’t work that way. They said that it could not have been a biochemical effect and was probably more a psychosomatic thing. It happened because I very much wanted it to happen. Of course I wanted it to happen. I had wanted it to happen with Anafranil but it didn’t, not even after three weeks.
My bottom line was that I didn’t care how it worked. The only fact that mattered was that it had. I don’t claim that it will work for anyone else, nor do I suggest that anyone should even try this -- or any drug -- without proper medical supervision. I don’t care what the makers used to produce the pill; witchcraft or voodoo magic, holy water or pixie dust, it doesn’t matter to me just so long as they keep on making them.
Meanwhile, back at the Office:
There was a problem with going back to work; I no longer wanted to. I saw all my previous work as a game, no more meaningful than a round of monopoly or a rubber of bridge. Oh, I’d played the game, gone round the board, bought a hotel on Broad Street and collected lots of money, but that is all it had been, a game.
At 38 I’d been the youngest man ever to reach the executive level in the department; one of only two in the Government who had reached that grade before turning forty. Now at fifty I was long overdue for promotion; when two Program Evaluation branches had been rolled into one, I’d taken on the jobs of two EX02 level Directors and successfully run the branch as an EX01. Colleagues said I should have demanded a promotion and even my boss had agreed. There were only three more steps left on the ladder and I was almost guaranteed the next one. With fifteen years until retirement age I was an odds on favourite to reach the top, but now what I wanted most was a undemanding little sinecure where I could drift through the next few years and take early retirement at the first possible opportunity.
I went to talk to Jane, the Director General of Human Resources and an old friend. I hoped she would not ask what I was looking for, as I would have to lie and talk about a ‘new challenge’ and a chance to ‘influence events’, and ‘make a difference’. Jane was a smart woman and likely to see straight through me, but I didn’t see how she could avoid asking that question. Yet she didn’t ask it. She asked me “How would you like to come and work with me in HR for a while?”
Jane had a problem with one of her branches. Morale was awful, projects were way behind schedule and budgets were ignored. The work turned in was far below expectations. The Director had asked for a transfer and Jane was ready to give it to him, but she had not been able to find a suitable replacement. There were three Chiefs of Division who reported to the Director and all three were female. Jane was aware of the work I’d done mentoring up-and-coming young women and thought with that in my background I would be well accepted by the chiefs. Jane asked if I would take a little time and think about this offer, and I said sure, about half a minute should be enough. I started the job the following week.
About HR Planning Branch:
The first thing I did was change the name. Planning was only one of the things we did, and not even the most important. We became the HR Programs branch. The next thing I did was change the rules, or more accurately the way that the rules were applied. Barry’s first rule: If a rule makes no sense, use sense. I gave my Division Chiefs much more scope to manage their staff with less emphasis on the rule book. If you want to reward an employee for work above and beyond the call of duty tell them to sleep late tomorrow, come to work when they’re ready. Or give them the day off and accidentally lose the paperwork. Never let extra effort go unremarked or unrewarded.
By the end of my first month I had established Fishburn rules and morale was perking up already. I even heard someone singing one afternoon. Beautiful!
I had a huge corner office, bigger than some of the places I’d lived in as a young man; it had a great old wooden desk with a ragged old chair, but I got a copy of the furniture catalogue mailed to me by Jane with a note saying ‘pick out a classy chair for yourself; my treat.’
One area of my office contained a conference table with four chairs and there was a big couch in one corner. Enormous windows made up two walls, with views down to the Chaudiere bridge over the Ottawa river. The Director’s Office at British Ropes and the Chief Chemist’s Office at Fishburns could both have fitted into my office with room to spare. I sat in my crappy old chair and laughed so hard that my secretary came in to see if I was alright. “Never better,” I told her. Before she could go back to her desk I asked her ‘What did they say about me?’ She said “Sir?” I said “I know that all of you must have had your feelers out to other places I’ve worked. You probably talked to Loraine at the Printing Bureau, while the Chiefs called some of my protégées from the Program Evaluation Branch. What did they say?” She blushed prettily. “They all said you were awesome,” she told me. I liked that. If that was to be my epitaph I was well pleased. It looked like this might be a nice, cosy place to play out my last few years.
I was stable on three pills a day and I was happy. The euphoria of my first pill had worn off and I was just ordinary everyday happy, but this was still new to me and I loved it. I made no secret of the fact that I was mentally ill and taking medication to stay sane. My Div Chiefs were fine about this and treated it lightly, which I liked; if I got snippy or upset about something one of them would say “For God’s sake will somebody get him a pill!” I encouraged and enjoyed long lunches, and when I came back from one I found a pill bottle on my desk. The label said ‘Screwitol tablets’; having a hard day, think Screwitol! I turned the tables on them; When one of them upset me, or even if they didn’t, I would open the bottle, swallow a handful and tell them ‘having to deal with you lot has driven me to drugs’. When I’d used up the original supply of candy I refilled the bottle with Smarties.
Before long, word of the ‘crazy HR Director’ spread throughout the department and people started calling to make discrete appointments to see me, usually during lunch break or after five o’clock quitting time. Some suspected that they were Big-D Depressed and wanted to compare symptoms; some wanted to talk about the behaviour of a colleague or a loved one. I would send them away feeling better, sometimes having made a promise to see their GP as soon as convenient. They often left relieved to have shared their secret worries with someone who had been there.
A long time friend took me for coffee and confessed that he had been taking anti-depressants for years and knew several highly placed men and women in the same boat.
The women of HR Programs Branch soon turned me into a hugger. When one was undergoing a marriage breakup and things got on top of her she would come to my office for a hug and when she felt better we’d go for a long coffee break. When one was diagnosed with breast cancer she needed daily hugs and promises that she would defeat it. She did.
My Chiefs and I were often called up to the DM’s committee to explain a program, or to request money to develop a new one. We had a different DM by this time, but they all seemed cut from similar cloth and it made little difference. This one didn’t know who I was either.
Time went by pleasantly and quickly. The kids all finished their education, the mortgage was paid off, Marion went back into the workforce, and the money started to pour in faster than we could spend it. We put a lot of it into tax shelters for the retirement which was coming nearer by the day.
If I’d still been interested in promotions my new attitude would have blown my chances out of the water. If I was in a meeting at five o’clock I’d pack my briefcase, say ‘goodnight’ and leave them all open mouthed. When regional representatives were in town I’d join them for supper, but when they all wanted to start talking shop at eight o’clock I was off, despite entreaties to stay.
As Director of HRP I became the departmental representative on the government’s Official Languages Committee. I thought it was hilarious to sit around with a group of Anglophones, all speaking our second rate French for the benefit of the Francophones, most of whom spoke better English than any of us.
As the departmental representative on the education committee I met with a group of university profs and assorted intellectuals and asked them to stop turning out children with liberal arts degrees. I got, on average, four or five enquiries a month from graduates begging for a job, any job, as they’d been unable to find one, sometimes after a year or more of searching. I had to tell them we don’t have any use for a BA History either. A fellow director in HR told me that many of our key-punch ‘girls’, young women who worked eight hours a day pecking away at a typewriter keyboard, had deliberately omitted their degrees on their job applications, afraid that we would think them over qualified. The committee called my DM (who still had no idea who I was) and asked to have me replaced. On this and other committees I happily delegated my seat to one of my Div Chiefs.
Jane had lunch with me to ask if I was happy in my job and let me know that I was blowing my chances for promotion away with my blasé attitude. I told her I loved my job but I might in a year or two make enquiries about a demotion. I told her that Marion and I had plans to retire to Nova Scotia but since there were so few openings at the EX levels there, I would be happy to move at a lower level classification. Jane said there was no way she or the department would allow me to take a demotion, but something could possibly be done about shipping me out to the Maritimes if I was serious. We agreed to discuss this again closer to 1995, when I would become eligible for early retirement.
About Endings and Beginnings:
In spring 1994 my Dad died. I had been too busy to go over when my Mum died, but had no excuse this time. I met up with my brother and sister at the funeral home. I went in to see Dad for the last time and was surprised to see him looking so well. I touched his face, which was hard and cold, and I thought that might be the first time I’d touched him since he came up the stairs at Doncaster railway station at the end of the war. I told him I was sorry we hadn’t been able to get along, and I said that it might have been partly my fault but it was 90% his. No, that was not it. I told him he had been suffering all his life with a nasty mental illness -- who should know better than I? -- and that his Depression caused him to behave badly to those he should have loved and cared for. In another place at another time it might all have worked out quite differently.
I told him ‘thank you’ for keeping a roof over my head and food on the table while I worked at the education which had been the key to my escape plan. I said it wasn’t important that the food was often bread and jam; we never really went hungry, and that was the main thing. I asked him to say hello to Mum from me when he met her, as I had no doubt she would be waiting. I told him he needn’t give her my love as I send that to her every day.
I said Goodbye, Dad.
I’m sure that he heard.
His flag-draped coffin was carried by his wartime comrades as a bugler played the last post. His ashes went to the memorial garden with Mum’s. Now there was no need for me ever to return to Doncaster.
When I got back to Ottawa I found that the Department of Supply and Services had been combined with the Department of Public Works. I’d known this was coming. The main impact of this move was that there were two of all the common services, including Human Resources. I now reported to an ADM, the second highest rank in the Civil Service. Technically, that made me a Director General at an EX02 level, but nobody ever mentioned a promotion and I no longer cared. While away in England I had become the Director of Education and Training, with a huge staff which I was asked to cut in half. On the Supply side Training people had always reported to me, so there was no change involved. On the Public Works side I inherited a bunch of divas who seemed to think that the department was there primarily to give them something to do while they collected more diplomas. The lowliest employee held at least one degree and half of them had PhDs. Apart from my secretary I think I was the only one in the group who didn’t have at least a bachelor’s degree, and I’m not too sure about her. Ninety five percent of the employees were female.
I was a year and a half away from early retirement with sufficient medical justification to retire even earlier. I had close to two years of accumulated sick leave, built up during the previous 28 years, in which I had used very little. It worried me that by dealing with these strange people I was in danger of backsliding from my stable happy state of mind. I explained as much to Ernest, my ADM, who was sympathetic but asked me to stay a while until things calmed down a bit.
Then, as it had done so often before, Fate stepped in.
Julia was one of the young women I had groomed for higher things and who now worked with me in HR as a fellow director. She had just returned from a visit to the Atlantic Region and came back to report major problems in the area. One woman there had filed a harassment grievance and several others had told Julia that they were not far from following suit. It was well known that when the two Departments merged, half the employees faced the possibility of being declared redundant; this included half of the HR employees in the area. It was rumoured that redundancy lists were being prepared in Ottawa to be implemented next year, with numbers involving up to one half of the department’s employees. We could do nothing to quell the rumours, for the simple reason that they were true.
Julia suggested to Ernest that a high-ranking officer from Human Resources should be sent on assignment for eighteen months or so to try to keep a lid on things and lead the region into the inevitable downsizing which was scheduled to begin –although this information was still top secret – the following year. Barry would be perfect for this, Julia suggested to our mutual boss, given his proven people skills. (She knew of my dream for retirement by the sea; I had done a couple of favours for Julia in the past and this was payback.)
Ernest met with me, and when I agreed to the assignment, he told me to write it up any way I wanted and he would make it happen.
Thanks, Julia. Our account is squared.
About Coming to Nova Scotia:
Marion and I left Ottawa in the fall of 1994. Driving down the Queensway, heading East, the sky was full of colourful Hot Air Balloons in many shapes and sizes. They escorted us out along the same road which had brought me into Ottawa nearly three decades ago, and I thought it was a very nice gesture even if the balloon pilots hadn’t known they were making one. The drive to Halifax took sixteen hours and we were very tired when we arrived at our hotel.
The next morning I checked in at the office to meet my boss, Mark, a long time friend who had climbed the ladder along with me. He knew about my mental state, and that my assignment was part of a golden handshake. He knew that I was answerable to Ernest and still on his payroll. He told me essentially that I should keep myself occupied with whatever I felt appropriate, and come to see him any time I needed help. One of the Good Guys.
While I was doing this Marion found us a nice though very small apartment on the 14th floor of a nearby block. We had a wonderful view of the Navy dockyards and watched frigates and subs coming and going from our balcony. When the Tallship festival came to Halifax we had one of the best seats in the house.
I was given a small office in the HR area and spent the first few hours walking around and chatting with the staff. I spent an hour setting up my computer, then played a few rounds of solitaire, and was back at the hotel by 3 p.m.
I met with a reporter from the departmental newspaper and gave her some information on what 1995 would bring. I told her that anyone with reasonable intelligence should realise that the new department didn’t need two HR branches, two Security Branches, two Finance Branches – or two of anything else so we may as well face up to the fact that downsizing was inevitable. I said that anyone who had any good, logical ideas about how this could be handled humanely could give me a call and we’d get together to discuss them. I also said I’d arrange some focus groups if enough people were interested in participating. I reported directly to the ADM of Human Resources, I told her, and I would most definitely pass on any good ideas.
She seemed to be happy with this and reported pretty much what I’d said. I got a few calls and ran a couple of focus groups. I typed up the details and e-mailed a report to Ernest. I was home in time for afternoon tea with Marion.
Marion was spending her days house hunting, and was learning a lot about the area south-west of Halifax, known locally as the South Shore. This is a very beautiful, very sought after area. We were looking for an oceanfront home, or at least a nice view of the sea, and we’d been told by friends in Ottawa that Chester was a very nice area. When we told the realtor that we were interested in oceanfront property in Chester she laughed and said that waterfront in Chester never came on the market since every property on the water had a waiting list of people ready to put money down – and lots of it – in the event that the owner decided to sell; in the rare event that an oceanfront property came onto the open market we would be looking at one and a half million and up. We had a little laugh and left.
A yellow sticky note was pinned on my office door when I came in one morning. Someone had written on it “How many executives does it take to play a game of solitaire?” I didn’t find this funny and became upset about it. I left it sticking there and next morning somebody had taken it down. There was no open hostility from the employees in the office but I couldn’t help feeling that there was a lot of jealousy and bitterness. Everybody knew now that layoffs were coming, and nobody knew for certain whether they would be the ones to stay or go. Nobody except me.
I could have helped them, or any of the other employees of the department. I could have explained that even if they were targeted they would get preferential placement for vacancies at their level elsewhere in the federal government, and it would be wise to get their CVs up to date and be ready. I could have explained how to access the vacancies board and get a jump on the competition for new openings. But in the end I simply didn’t care.
About the return of the Shadow:
Marion had found a GP in Halifax, Dr. C., who was prepared to take us on as new patients, I went with Marion to meet him and talk about my mental condition. We set up a time for a consultation and he put me through a series of tests to check my mental state. I thought that being on three pills per day I’d come out of the tests as normal, but to my surprise his diagnosis was very similar to that of the young doctor in Ottawa. He told me that I was the most seriously disturbed individual he had ever met outside an institution. I couldn’t understand this since I still felt quite happy, but Dr. C said that regardless of how I felt, the move to Halifax had been a very stressful event, as was the job I was trying to do. He said he’d noticed signs of anxiety the first time we met. As it had already been established that I would be treated by drug therapy he said he could accept responsibility for my ongoing treatment, which was fine by me. He suggested that Nortriptiline might not be the best anti-depressant for me, and we tried a number of newer drugs, but the unpleasant side effects of these drove me back to my old friend, the little yellow and white capsule of magic pixie dust which had changed my life. Dr. C was concerned about my mental condition so we arranged a series of appointments to monitor and adjust my medication as needed.
I hadn’t noticed it before but Dr. C was right, there was something wrong. I was slipping back into some of my old ways. I asked if I should increase my dosage for a little while, and Dr. C agreed.
It didn’t work.
Marion had found a boatyard for sale on the South Shore and we drove down to see it. Our Ottawa home had sold well so we were in a good position to make a cash offer. The property had an acre of land with nearly 250 feet of oceanfront; I couldn’t believe that it had not been snapped up. The problem was the house, a small fisherman’s ‘saltbox’ with one large and three very tiny bedrooms, and inside we found dirty water in the bath and hamster poop everywhere, as though no effort had been made to sell. The reason it had not sold was that it had been billed as a family home and any woman seeing the house in such condition had probably walked away then and there with her husband in tow. The boathouse was a huge 3,500 square feet. It contained three boats and a small airplane, all under construction.
We went off to a nearby coffee shop to talk about it and although the house was a comedown for Marion after our Ottawa home she let me put in an offer, which was instantly accepted, and we closed just before Christmas 1994.
About a lucky break: In the new year detailed plans for downsizing were announced; as expected they involved large numbers of employees. Not surprisingly the plans contained a section on the executive ranks, since when one executive is removed from the top of the ladder eight employees can climb up one rung each. The