A million people live here. I moved away in 2012. AND YET a university classmate from like 16 years ago was on the same westbound 1 train as me. Just Ottawa Things.
Unfortunately I’m on a limited schedule so I can’t really linger on the crank letters, but the real MVP here is Beth Buchanan, aforementioned secretary to TCA’s president, who compiled and kept these letters for our enjoyment 60 years later. I always love finding evidence of her in the archives.
Here’s the TCA president asking his secretary “do we know who this ape is?” of a guy upset that his stewardess had a British accent—“Canada is *not* British!!! You *are* a square!”—and the response when she forwarded the message to the public relations department.
Here are the two most Ottawa Experiences I’ve had in the one (1) week I’ve been home:
1. Sitting next to some Liberal party staffers at a coffee shop and overhearing their discussion about the differences between “Justin” and “Mark”
2. Running into two people I know on the bus.
I love this city.
“Thanks for keeping my adulterous husband on as Sales Rep in Ottawa and not helping me when I need it,” a former Trans-Canada Air Lines stewardess from Vancouver wrote to the airline president in 1962. “…he’s engaged to be married to a TCA girl.”
Now this, my friends, is an a finding aid that makes you want to see what the hell is in that box.
someone got his summer haircut yesterday
oh god there’s a typo in the original post. remind me not to draft skeets and process archival documents at the same time.
Lazy Sunday mornings with Slugger: a story in three acts
ok the “crank letters” do not disappoint. So far there’s someone who claims he can metaphysically predict airplane accidents, a person writing in about the immorality of pilots (they cheat on their wives, it seems) and a few guys trying to sell wild inventions for like $50,000