Joining the 'Feds'

Fifty years ago today, I joined the 'Feds,' a.k.a., the Public Service of Canada; it was my first job following graduation from St. F.X.
It was part of an exciting year -- 1967 -- when Canadians were marking the 100th anniversary of Confederation.
That week was also quite special in the field of popular music: on June 1, the ground-breaking album,"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released by the Beatles.
But those topics of discussion, Dear Reader, are for other times!

Here are a few of my impressions from my first few weeks and months, working in Ottawa:
-- First of all, everything was new: to get there, I took my first airplane ride.
-- I was not yet 21 years old (my birthday would come a week later!), I was too young to sign a lease, and had to settle for living in a boarding house for the interim.
-- It was my first experience living in a big city; it took almost an hour to get to / from work on the city's excellent public transportation system.
-- One 'perk' was having to ride past the Peace Tower (houses of Parliament) twice a day!
-- I was part of a group of about a dozen recent graduates from across Canada, who were recruited as 'Administrative Trainees' in the federal Public Service.
-- That first day, when we got together for the first orientation and met our leaders, we took part in our first exercise: getting fingerprinted and declaring our oath of service. ***
-- The next week, I signed on with the 'Fitness and Amateur Sports' group, spent a few days of orientation with them, and then embarked on French classes for the next few months!
We were being groomed to carry out our duties in both official languages.
These classes -- at the intermediate level -- proved to be rather easy for a native Acadian speaker. However, most of what we were learning was based on the work vocabulary of Québec, so I had to learn a whole new approach.
Throughout the summer, the French classes, which were held in Hull (now, 'Gatineau'), proved to be rather exciting and fun. A couple of classmates had taken part in school plays, so we got to 'act out' comedy scenes using our newly acquired vocabulary!
Later, in the daily work environment, I observed and noted a couple of points that have stood out until this day:
-- A amazing amount of work is carried out at the coffee break / 'pause café!'
-- There is little truth to the rumour the public servants don't work hard: most of the people I worked with during my two-and-a half years were serious, conscientious folks, who worked long hours, sometimes during weekends or holidays, to meet a deadline.
*** Recently, a news story caught my attention: A national researcher complained that the Federal Government had failiedfor decades to release even routine information from its archives.
They had lagged so far behind, he claimed, that his job was being rendered increqsingly difficult. He urged them to return to a more up-to-date release schedule.
You may wonder, Dear Reader, what does this story have to do with me?
Well ... somewhere in some (dark, musty, underground) archive stands a paper with my loyalty oath, fingerprints and signature on it.
Happy hunting!