Every weekday I went to my job. I put on my office clothes, which included a skirt, a blouse, a garter belt, two stockings (pantyhose not having hit the scene yet), and medium-high heels. I then clopped over to Bay Street and took the bus. Downtown Toronto was still filled with sooty Victorian-looking brickwork, and Canadian Facts was in one of these solemn and ponderous office buildings. It did not have air conditioning—large fans were suspended from its high ceilings—but it did have an elevator, and it was in this elevator, coming back from lunch break, that I learned John Kennedy had been shot. Everyone then alive can remember where they were when they heard the news. This event was the end of something—some dream of America we’d all thought was real.
The work at my job was varied. Sometimes I was revising questionnaires; sometimes I was testing them, either in person or over the phone. People still answered their phones then. Or I might be doing a face count in a supermarket—how many boxes of Brand X noodles were face out at eye level? Or I might be participating in a taste test—we had a kitchen, and were called into it to eat things. We tried out the mini rice puddings in tins. Who would buy these? I wondered, forgetting about school lunches. We deployed the first Pop-Tarts to a housewife panel and had to replace a number of toasters when the Pop-Tarts exploded, spewing hot jam. I thought that would be the end of them, but I was wrong. Their maker added more adhesive, and they went on to become a raging success.
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