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Tens of thousands of people and a number of businesses, including the head office of Sun Life of Canada, moved away from Quebec after the separatist-minded PQ came to power in November 1976. Canadian Business magazine in early 1977, its 50th year of publication, also moved from Montreal to Toronto.
Column: From Ottawa
The year's most important event politically was certainly the triumph of the Parti Québecois [sic] over Quebec's Liberals [Nov. 15, 1976].... By the end of this year we should have a much better idea whether or not Canada can hang together as a nation, or if we'll be Balkanized, cannibalized, or just plain fragmented.
—Vol. 50, No. 1, January 1977
Where do we go from here?
Canadian economic and financial trends during 1976 evolved in a climate of uncertainty that clearly inhibited the rate of recovery from the recent recession.... It is still early to make a definitive objective appraisal of the effects of the new Quebec government's policies on the provincial and Canadian economies. What is clear is that the level of uncertainty has been raised a notch or two.
—Vol. 50, No. 1, January 1977
WASP joke of the month
All you need to know about the state of business confidence in Quebec is contained in the following joke, now going the rounds in Montreal:
"What's the difference between a house in Westmount and a social disease?"
"Well, sometimes you can get rid of a social disease."
—Vol. 50, No. 10, October 1977
Companies active
Several companies now encourage office workers to exercise regularly, pointing out that the more they exercise the more fit they will feel, and consequently, the more alert and more capable they will be on the job.
Two companies who have taken the initiative in this are...Sun Life and the C.B.C. They make their auditoriums available for jogging and calesthenics [sic].
—Vol. 48, No. 1, January 1975
How better reading skills can cure executive stress
One of the results of the recent business recession has been an increase in executive depression. Considering the cost of this depression...it's not surprising that medical studies of it have been swift, not to say urgent. But it is curious how these studies have been so exclusively medical--ignoring entirely the sociological impact of Electric Age factors on our lives in general, but in particular on our reading. For reading is perhaps the most crucial executive skill, and is often the bellwether of executive morale....
It is more than a decade since professor Marshall McLuhan, the communications guru, noted in Understanding Media: "...The senior executives, or 'big wheels,' as they are archaically and ironically designated...are among the hardest pressed and most persistently harassed groups in human history." Since that point was made, the Electric Age has spawned copier, computer, telephone and TV usage of a sort hitherto unprecedented. The executive reading load has become both enormously heavy and enormously difficult to process....
[Executives] tend to be easily distracted by peripheral movements in their work situations, and to be slow in developing sharpness for reading. They may put their hands up to their heads to block out peripheral vision—and soon find themselves enjoying the "rest" more than the read. Their minds wander off in all directions.... [and] today's numerous and tedious meetings entail much "gazing into space" which nurtures brain neglect....
Where [speed-reading practice] restores eye-brain attentiveness...the effect is electrifying for depressed executives.
--Vol. 48, No. 9, September 1975
Reefer gladness
Containerized shipping has turned Halifax from a sleepy navy town to one of the top 25 container ports in the world, the major throughway for goods travelling between central Canada and Europe. What's only becoming apparent now, however, is the boost that containers are giving to Atlantic [provinces'] trade. Regional shippers have suddenly found Europe and other world points at their doorstep, and they're discovering export business that never existed before....
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