...speak ill of the dead, but reading about the death of Sonia Bata, I relived many negative memories of having worked with her. In 1975, I was in charge of the "Vincent Massey Awards for Excellence in the Urban Environment." Sponsored by The Canada Council, The Massey Foundation and Canada Mortgage and Housing, the award had a luminous group of judges; Sonia was one of them.
Forty-nine at the time, Mrs. Bata was quite frankly a bi-ch -- especially with me, a 28-year-old, fairly good-looking woman. She was haughty, dismissive, rude, over-bearing and opinionated. She didn't like me, that was clear. In fact, she didn't like women in general. However, I was solicitous of her and treated her with respect because that was my job.
Looking back, I wonder how I got this job? I think it was my private-sector experience in Toronto with IBM, Maclean-Hunter and Dupont of Canada, where I had to work with a myriad of people from all over Canada and the world. Weekly meetings about the award program's progress were held with Humphrey Carver, Ian McLennan and Hart Massey, during which I was grilled. Hart Massey was also a nasty guy who never gave me one word of encouragement. Instead, he criticized everything I did.
Happily, the program went off without a hitch and we had the award presented by then-Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn at Rideau Hall. Luckily, I was able to avoid Mrs. Bata.
RIP anyway.
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