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Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah
I woke up on Monday morning, last week, and thought about a woman who was my mentor, and friend, way back in my Big Pharma Days in Toronto. As I slurped through my first coffee of the morning, I thought about my first day in that office. I was pretty excited about my first real, full-time job. Anne popped into our department to welcome me and then she invited me to join her for a coffee break. I didn’t know who Anne was or which department she worked in. Indeed, I’m fairly certain I wasn’t even aware of other departments within that Corporation. I was young and not too aware. Anne was the woman who tried to teach me how to play the “office politics” game. I didn’t know the shenanigans I saw, every day, was politics. I didn’t even know about “politics”. Anne knew everyone in the Toronto office (which was fairly big) and everyone in the New York Office (even bigger) and everyone who was anyone in the foreign offices. She introduced me to mainframe computing systems before it was a thing in many offices. She made me enrol in the Computing Systems programme offered by the New York Office through the State University and arranged for studying time during office hours. Anne made sure I was prepared for interviews when promotions were offered. As it turned out, she was the Assistant to the North American Vice President of the Corp, but she was, also, just plain folks. But why did last Monday bring me a rush of “Anne” nostalgia?
Since the beginning of 2020 I’ve had a lot of time to think about people who used to be, and some continue to be, in my life. Lots and lots of time to think. I’ve come to a conclusion, and it’s interesting one: most of the people who had a profound influence on my life were women. I’m talking, mostly, about my work/career life. There have been a lot of women who paid attention to me as I bumbled along trying to figure things out in my private life, too. However, I’ve been focusing on the women who have helped me along in my work-a-day. As it turns out, Anne was one of those women who believed in me and took the time to show me the ropes in the corporate world. As it turned out, after five years in that amazing environment LOML and I made huge the decision to move to Prince Edward County. I missed Anne. I missed my career. Anne and I stayed in touch for years after moving to small town Ontario in October of 1972. At first I felt stifled living here. I had become used to working in a huge, multinational corporation. As luck would have it, in the nearly fifty years I’ve lived in PEC I’ve been fortunate to met some pretty amazing women who gave an actual good gosh darn about other women, and me in particular.
If I were to simply make a list of the County women who have been here for me, this week’s column would just be a bunch of names. Yep, I’d just name names. Last week one of the women who had a profound effect on my life passed away. Evelyn Drew reminded me of Anne, in a way. I didn’t know it when I first met Evelyn, but I know it now. When I began my brand new career in the museum business, Evelyn was there with interesting tidbits of information about the County, the Town of Picton, the folks at Sheer Hell and, most especially, about furniture, fixtures and the inner workings of Macaulay Heritage Park. Evelyn always listened and encouraged. Sometimes she’d just nod. Sometimes she’d tell a story about an event, or an artifact, or a person who was involved in making Macaulay what it had become. She never told me what to do, she just told me how things worked and why they worked the way they did. Occasionally, the lesson came with a warning, but the learning—or not learning—was on me. She was a wily lady. Crafty, one might say. Marianne Evelyn Drew, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
I have, like I wrote, a huge list of women, in the County, who believed in me and helped me along the way. So many women! Thank you for being my cheer section, a soft-shoulder and my inspiration.
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