City Notebook: Tied up in a new-age dress code
By COLLIN GALLANT on December 28, 2019.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant It’s been a 12-month meditation for your author after the late-2018 announcement that Cancarb would expand its local production plant. The question being: if the CEO of a major Japanese company doesn’t have to wear a tie to a press event, why do reporters? Make no mistake, the president of Tokai Carbon, Hajime Nagasaka, was very gracious, and stylishly dressed as he addressed the local workforce. Perhaps it was a safety thing? It was an industrial site. Didn’t my old shop teacher say that a tie would drag you chin first into machinery? If so, no one seemed concerned about my well-being. It’s more likely that out of protocol and politeness for the local custom the tie was doffed in favour of a more “business casual” (think fine patterned shirt and blazer) affectation that seems to be the standard now even in top business circles. A quick game of tie-spotting finds them around the necks of reporters, top public administrators, attorneys, elected officials and undertakers. A dress code passed at Cypress County meetings several years ago only requires collared shirts. Similarly, during a mid-year gathering at the News for birthday cake, it was casually mentioned how the “ties for men” policy had been dropped several years ago. At the time managing editor Bruce Penton and your author looked at each other as if to ask, why didn’t we get the memo? An ironic twist is that Penton – who quickly stopped wearing ties and then retired – is forever mentioning the Back to the Future movie series. One of its bolder predictions, is that that in the distant future or 2015, wearing two neck ties at once would be in vogue. Speaking of the future This column has included a few notes lately about time (mainly daylight saving time) and the solar system, but we seem to have completely missed the fact that the decade ends in about three days. Did you too? There’s a lot of evidence building up that we’re now squarely in the “future.” We’re 20 years past the Y2K scare. It’s a legitimate debate in the business circles about how Canadians can best get buzzed off gummy bears. Space tourism is a thing, and rocket launches by private companies barely rate anymore. Keeping us grounded however, is a dark joke making the rounds that by 2019, we were promised flying cars and all we got was measles. Last minute If you’re still looking for the perfect gift for the hard-to-shop-for person on your list… why not a winery? News travels across the line this week that Marty and Marie Bohnet, of the Cypress Hills Winery, are entertaining offers on the business they began building up in the early 2000s as they contemplate retirement. In the news Medicine Hat hit the headlines in 2019 in such titles as the Washington Post, the Financial Post, several substantial articles in the Globe and Mail, as well as every single edition of the Medicine Hat News. Last week, Calgary Star Metro featured Medicine Hat homeless initiative in its final print edition (the parent Toronto Star is scaling back the endeavour). Quickly An early-bird draw is now on for tickets for packages to next year’s world junior hockey tournament in Red Deer and Edmonton. Now that Medicine Hat has a regulation-sized rink, what are the odds we’ll see a warm-up game here? (Three Hills, Alta. got one in 2011). A look ahead City council meetings resume on Jan. 6, 2020. The carbon levy resumes Jan. 1. 100 years ago Workers at the Lake of the Woods mill received a Christmas bonus of 10 per cent of their annual wage, the News reported near the end of 1919, as well as a “fat turkey and Christmas Day as a holiday with full pay.” Such and example of profit sharing should be copied by others, the News editorial stated, as an avenue to ease tension between business interests and the working class. Canada would receive 5 per cent of a $100-million donation made by the Rockefeller Foundation to improve education system’s across North America. The British Dominions would have voting rights in the League of Nations, according to British PM Lloyd George. U.S. veterans of Scottish descent petitioned a New Jersey school board to ban “MacBeth” as they saw the play as a slander against the nationality. Christmas morning joyriders smashed the gates of the CPR yard in a stolen Overland and only came to full stop when the auto plowed into another stolen car that had “previously come to rest wrong side up.” Police were investigating. Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com 37-36
