POSTING #44

Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Last Sunday after a visit to Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Pat and I decided to drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a pleasant stroll on its Queen Street (does every town in Canada have a Queen Street?).

As we neared the town, we could see clouds of brownish-gray smoke billowing up from a site that seemed to be close to the Prince of Wales Hotel---the hotel that has just been named the best hotel in Ontario.

We feared the worst.

It turned out that the fire was not in the hotel but in two heritage, wooden buildings just to the west of it.

For several hours we watched the fire fighters from a spot in front of the restaurant Corks, only about a hundred yards across the street from the flames (for people familiar with NOTL, Corks has replaced the Buttery Restaurant). The NOTL and St. Catharines fire departments arrived at 1.15 PM to fight the stubborn blaze and finally turned off the hoses at 9.15 PM.

They had an aerial ladder on Queen Street pumping water on the front of the buildings and another in a parking lot behind the stores, plus a number of hand-held hoses spraying the fire and cooling adjacent buildings. At one point as the aerial ladder behind the stores swiveled to change its target, water sprayed across the street drenching us.

It was a surreal experience.

A few feet in front of us was the command centre with tables of food and drinks for firefighters taking a break. A woman with a stroller and two young children beside us said that she had two brothers fighting the fire.

A few feet behind us, on the veranda of Corks, people were laughing and joking as they ate their meals and drank their beer. The first line of Lord Byron's poem about the battle of Waterloo kept running through my head, " There was a sound of revelry by night..."

We understand that the fire started in the basement of one of the stores from some sort of electrical problem. Ironically, that store was NOTL's fire hall for part of the 1800s.

No lives were lost, but NOTL has lost two historic buildings that gave character to its main street.

Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia

Recently I was reading an article that analyzed the shift of the world's economic centre of gravity from Europe and North America to Asia.

There is an amazing and continuing transformation of economies that were once known primarily for the production of cheap knock-off watches, lighters, handbags and the like.

Here are three stories about change in Asia.

In 1969, during a visit to the Canadian Consulate in New York I saw one of the consular officials shaking his head.

He had just had a request for assistance from an unnamed Japanese car company. He explained that the Japanese company wanted to buy a hundred used cars from different regions of Canada and ship them to Japan. The company had provided a detailed list of the cars it wanted to buy---both North American and foreign--showing the make, age and location. For example, one of the cars was to be a 5 year-old Chevrolet from Sudbury.

The cars would be taken apart piece-by-piece in Japan by the company's engineers so they could see what driving in Canada did to cars.

The company wanted to be sure that there were no government regulations that would interfere with the purchase of the cars or the shipping of them to Japan. The consular official assured the company that if they wanted to spend a lot of money and time buying used cars the Canadian Government would not object.

He thought the whole thing was bizarre.

Perhaps not so bizarre.

Japan had started shipping cars to Canada in the 1960s and they hadn't fared very well. Japanese cars had to be coddled in the winter or they wouldn't start, and they rusted like nobody's business.

North American cars were no great shakes either but they started better in the winter and didn't rust quite so badly.

Quality was a problem though. This was the time when newspaper articles told us not to buy cars built on Mondays because of high absenteeism after weekends. The factories would produce the same number of cars so the managers could meet their production goals but the cars would often be missing nuts, bolts, bits of trim and other parts.

Japan had begun to listen to Dr. W. Edward Deming, an American expert on quality, who had few if any followers at that time in the North American auto industry. The Japanese car companies and soon most of their manufacturing industries had committed themselves to Deming's 'quality revolution'.

Viewed from this perspective, the buying of used cars doesn't seem so bizarre. The Japanese were determined to build cars that would be reliable in a Canadian environment.

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One of the regular guests around 2000 at our Denwycke House at Grimsby bed and breakfast was a senior manager at a Canadian company that manufactured high-end shower enclosures and whirlpool tubs. As the companies they competed with transferred production off-shore to lower cost countries, his company decided that if they were to compete they would have follow suit.

They decided to shift their production to China.

Our guest visited the Chinese company a few months after it had begun producing goods for his company. He said that as he toured the plant, managers and supervisors kept repeating to him---almost begging, he said---that he and his colleagues must alert the company immediately if they ever found anything wrong with the components. The Chinese wanted to be given a chance to correct the problem.

At the end of the tour the plant manager asked him if he had seen anything that could be improved in how the plant was operating. The Canadian said he thought things were operating pretty well, but taking an envelope from his pocket he started sketching how the various machines might be shifted to create a somewhat smoother production flow.

The plant manager thanked him profusely and asked if he could have the sketch.

When the Canadian returned to the factory the next morning the plant manager asked him if they could take another tour of the plant.

The Canadian was puzzled---they had just toured the plant the day before---but he agreed.

As they entered the factory floor, the Canadian saw that all the machines that he had suggested be moved, had been moved.

He was flummoxed. The machines were large and heavy, and had to be anchored to the floor. How could they have been moved so quickly?

The plant manager told him that he had called in extra teams and they had worked all night to relocate the machines.

The manager bowed and thanked him for his help.

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In the 1980s, officials from the Chinese Public Employment Service were visiting the national headquarters of Canada's Employment Service. After a presentation on Canada's internationally groundbreaking dictionary of occupations that described and classified some 65,000 occupations, the Chinese asked if they could have a copy of the dictionary.

The Canadian officials said they would be happy to provide a set but pointed to the five large, heavy volumes that made up the set and asked if they really wanted to lug those back to China in their luggage. The Chinese said there was no problem, they would divide the set among them.

A couple of years later, a Canadian employment service person was in Beijing visiting one of the Chinese officials who had come to Canada. The official pointed to his bookcase. Sitting on the shelves were the five volumes of the Canadian dictionary, and beside them a number of other volumes with Chinese lettering on the spines.

The official explained that they had translated the Canadian dictionary into Chinese.

This was a monumental task and the Canadian was amazed that they had done so much work and done it so quickly.

But he had some news that he didn't know whether he should share with the Chinese official.

Canada was about to release a new dictionary of occupations that would be more complete and accurate, and that would make the earlier dictionary obsolete.

He finally decided he had to tell the official about the new version. Instead of showing any concern, the official asked if they could have a copy of the new dictionary. He explained that the work they had done on the first dictionary would help them translate the new one.

And, he added with a smile, "We have lots of translators."


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During the latter stages of my government career I helped train senior managers and I suppose it is that experience that makes me ask, 'What are the learning points from these stories?"

It seems to me that they suggest that the Asian economic success is based in part at least on their citizens being willing to learn from others and then to act---to change---and to do so quickly.

A recent article said that the Chinese Government, which as everyone knows has had a poor reputation in the past on pollution, has now decided to be a leading player in green technology. While some of us---and some of our leaders---are debating about whether climate change is real, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans will be building solar systems, wind turbines and electric cars.

And selling them to us.

The Asian nations have benefited by learning from us.

Perhaps it is now time for us to learn from them.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

When our children were young, we bought a globe for Christmas one year.

After I had explained that this was how the Earth would appear from outer space, one of them wanted to know what 'the lines' were for, pointing to the latitude and longitude lines.

Thinking that this would be a good opportunity for 'a teaching moment', I described how people could use those lines to find their way around the world.

The child thought about this for a moment and then said, "But there are no lines on the land."

I still treasure that moment, as the child tried to make the mental leap from the concrete to the abstract.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #45 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.