POSTING #63

No Joking Matter; Attracting British Immigrants to Canada: Grandpa's Cell phone


No Joking Matter

I went to the local Toyota dealer the other day to get replacement batteries for the key fob control that locks, unlocks and starts the Prius---after nearly 5 years the batteries were getting weak.

As I approached the Parts Desk, three fellows were checking invoices or something. One of them looked up and asked if he could help me.

I guess the devil was in me that day and I said, "I understand there is a recall for key fob batteries."

As soon as I said the word 'recall', the three men started as though someone had jabbed them with a cattle prod.

"I'm just joking", I said.

The three men started to breath again.

The moral is that one shouldn't joke about recalls anywhere near a Toyota dealership.


Attracting British Immigrants to Canada

Here are some stories from the years 1960 to 1966 when I was working with the Canadian Immigration Service attracting skilled British workers to Canada, based first in Leeds, Yorkshire and then in London.

First a little background.

The Service had a limited budget and the main promotion method was the relatively inexpensive film show. We would rent a hall, hire a projectionist and place a modest advertisement in a local newspaper. Companies interested in carrying immigrants across the Atlantic, and in Canada like Cunard, Canadian Pacific, Trans-Canada Airline (as Air Canada was then called), British Overseas Airways Company (now British Air) and Canadian National Railways would join us with advertisements and would send representatives to the film shows to distribute literature.

If it were my turn to do a show, I would drive to the city, check in at a small hotel and go over to the hall to give the projectionist a couple of short films about Canada and make sure everything was ready.

After introducing myself, we would show the films and I would speak about job opportunities and living conditions in Canada. The talk was followed by a question and answer period.

Canada was in a fairly deep recession from roughly 1960 to 1963 and we had to be careful to stress that the job market was not rosy, except for certain occupations. The question sessions could sometimes be contentious, especially if there were people who had started a new life in Canada and decided to return after being laid off (for example, many British immigrants were displaced after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow aircraft program in 1959 and returned very disgruntled to the UK).

After the film show, the four or five travel reps and I would go to a pub, and then after a few drinks go back to the hotel where we were staying.

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At one of my first shows, I was getting ready to go on the stage to introduce the first film when a man pushed through a group of people I was talking to, shook hands, gave me his name and said he was with The Times, and then withdrew.

Whoa! Stop the presses!

The Times, as in The Times of London, or as "The Thunderer". The paper that could bring down a government.

Why in the world had they sent a reporter to our show?

Were they planning a negative article, prompted perhaps by complaints from immigrants who had returned to Britain?

What would our headquarters in Ottawa think?

Years later, a senior bureaucrat mused that in all his years in the government, he couldn't recall a single public servant whose career had been advanced by talking to the press.

I think that I understood his point---instinctively---that evening at the film show. My career with the government was only two years old, and if I put a foot wrong it might be over sooner rather than later.

These thoughts kept running through my head as I conducted the show. I tried to weigh every word in the talk and in the question period.

Despite my concerns---or perhaps because of them---things went well. The questions were mainly straightforward requests for information and I didn't have trouble answering them.

After the formal part of the show ended, I stayed at the front and responded to some specific questions about opportunities in particular occupations.

Afterwards, exhausted by all this self-censoring, I wandered to the back of the hall and seeing The Times fellow went up to him.

"Well, what did you think?"

"It was good. I sold twenty-five", he said.

"Twenty-five what?"

"Copies of the Weekly Globe and Mail. The Times prints and distributes it for them."

(The Globe and Mail started the weekly paper for ex-patriates and business people with interests in Canada. It folded after a year or two.)

So, he wasn't a reporter after all, he was just flogging copies of the Weekly Globe and Mail.

After the public had gone, the travel company reps and I adjourned to a nearby pub and I ordered a pint of strong bitter (brewed with extra alcohol for Yorkshire coal miners). I felt as though I had just spent a long day of slogging at the coal face.

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One of the matters that often came up at these after-film-show pub sessions was whether sea or air travel to Canada led to higher success among immigrants. The reps from the shipping companies argued that the four or five days on the Atlantic let the immigrants rest and get psychologically prepared for the new life, helped them to adjust gradually to the time difference and also let them take more belongings.

The reps from the airlines conceded that there were some advantages to sea travel but they were over-ridden by the importance to eventual success of getting to Canada quickly and getting started---to strike while the iron was hot.

I have never seen any study that reviewed the impact of the mode of transport on the ultimate success of the immigrants. Intuitively, I would side with sea travel.

However, there was one immigrant who chose to go by sea, who after the fact might have opted for air travel.

In 1965, when I was running the London Canadian Immigration office, my secretary announced that a Scotland Yard detective wanted to see me about an immigrant who had been approved and had sailed for Canada two days before.

The detective started by saying that the immigrant was suspected of having been involved in fraud involving travellers cheques.

I assumed, since Scotland Yard was involved, that our immigrant was part of a gang of crooks in a scam involving huge amounts of money, perhaps millions of dollars.

The case was a bit more prosaic than that.

The detective said that the immigrant had borrowed 500 pounds sterling from a contact to start his new life in Canada. He was a skilled bricklayer, bricklayers were in high demand in Canada, and he would be able to repay the loan in short order.

As the sailing date came closer, the lender began to worry that he would never see his money again. He went to the immigrant and asked for it back.

The immigrant said he couldn't do that and showed him the travellers cheques that he had purchased with the 500 pounds.

The two had an argument and the lender apparently threatened some violence if he didn't get his money back.

Then, the detective continued, the two had hatched a little illegal plot.

The immigrant would give the travellers cheques to the lender and, claiming he had lost them, get replacement cheques from the travel cheque company before the ship left.

To make reasonably sure that each was able to cash his cheques, they agreed that the lender would not try to cash the cheques until the immigrant had arrived in Canada and disappeared into the vast new country. If there were any questions, the lender would argue that the immigrant had owed him money and given him the cheques in payment.

Meanwhile, the immigrant once in Canada would cash the cheques and without the speed-of-light clearing of financial instruments that we have today it would be weeks before a problem was discovered.

The lender and the immigrants felt that once the deception was discovered the travel cheque people would probably not bother to call the police over only 500 pounds. If they did it would be hard for the police to find him in Canada.

The detective acknowledged that the plan had a certain elegance to it.

Unfortunately, greed intervened and the lender tried to cash the original cheques the day after the immigrant had sailed. Moving within un-British speed the bank passed the cheques to the travel cheque company the same day. The company spotted the problem and called the police.

Under questioning, the lender admitted the scam and was now being held.

The detective asked if we would detain the immigrant when he arrived in Montreal and send him back.

A telex went off to Ottawa and the immigrant was held on the ship. He sailed back on the same ship to Southampton, where British police were waiting for him.

Now there was a case where it would have been better to have flown to Canada.

Grandpa's Cell phone

Pat and I bought new cell phones this week and we identify so very much with the following poem written by George Parsons of Ottawa for his grand-daughter.

The poem was passed on by his wife Ann, and George has kindly agreed to let me share it with you.

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""Recently I bought a cell phone, just to have in the car, mainly for emergencies.
As the following explains, little did I know .....

Grandpa's Cell Phone

I have a little cell phone
That goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of it
Is more than I can see.

It's larger than a postage stamp,
Though not by very much,
With twenty little buttons
That I'm required to touch
To activate its functions,
That number near a score --
From E-mail to photography,
Computer games, and more.
There's a "world clock" and a calendar,
(I'm not pulling any legs)
It converts foreign currency
And will even time your eggs.

And did I mention Voice-mail?
And FM radio?
But this is just a partial list
(As far as I will go).
Amid the many choices
One question stands alone:
With all those tiny buttons,
HOW TO USE THE BLOODY PHONE?"

George Parsons

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See you next Sunday for Posting #64 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.