Being the bearer of bad news comes with the job, but I'd never delivered it quite the way I did Thursday.
Actually, the last time I rang the front door bell of my neighbour, an Air Canada flight attendant, it was in gratitude.
Kathy Courtney got bad news Thursday.
I was dropping off a box of Bernard Callebaut chocolates as my way of saying thanks to Kathy Courtney, who had recognized me as a Linden Woods neighbour and treated me especially graciously on a flight home to Winnipeg.
This time I arrived at Kathy's front door in sympathy.
A Fed-Ex envelope in hand.
The envelope -- and the bad news therein -- hand been stuffed in her mailbox, which I just happened to see before she did.
"That's probably the letter," Kathy said, as I handed it to her at the front door.
The official letter -- couriered overnight to all 145 of the Winnipeg-based Air Canada flight attendants -- confirmed what a colleague in Toronto had already told her the day before.
"We are writing you today," senior Air Canada director Stephen Knowles' letter began, "to confirm the difficult business decision that will close the Winnipeg and Halifax In Flight Service (IFS) cabin crew bases, effective November 1, 2008."
I was going to say "sorry" to Kathy.
But Kathy said sorry first.
She apologized for the messy house.
The 50-year-old mother of two teenage boys explained she had been flying for eight straight days -- her flight to Toronto later Thursday would be make it nine -- and I'd caught her trying to do the laundry and clean the house.
That's not the only reason she was a bit behind on the home front. Kathy had just returned to work in April after being off for a year and a half due to breast cancer.
With 28 years of service -- which puts her in the middle of the seniority list of an extremely long-serving Winnipeg base -- she and the rest could survive the collective bad news.
They could fly standby to work in Toronto where they would probably end up having to share the rent with other cabin crew in a "crash-pad" apartment. Complete with mattresses on the floor, which Kathy said is already happening.
"It could be done," Kathy said. "But there's not much space flying out of Winnipeg. And there are flight attendants who are single mothers and for them, I don't know what they're going to do."
There's another possibility.
The Winnipeg-based flight attendants could simply move to Toronto. But that's not likely.
"Everyone who's here has chosen to be here," Kathy said.
Actually, years ago, after Kathy's husband, Don, transferred from Toronto to Winnipeg with CP Rail, she didn't want to move to Winnipeg.
Now she can never imagine leaving.
Having flown across Canada, she knows how precious our Winnipeg lifestyle is by comparison.
But she has kids going into university, kids who know this as home.
"I've got to keep working," Kathy said.
Air Canada is citing sky-high fuel prices as the rationale for doing away with the flight attendant base.
But where are the savings in Winnipeg, when the pilots who are staying and the flight attendants who are leaving share the same office space administration support?
The savings, I suspiciously suggest, come in trying to make life so impossible for the seniority-heavy Winnipeg-based flight attendants that they'll simply retire rather than attempt to commute standby to Toronto.
There is one sentence -- one word actually -- that speaks to the attitude that really fuelled the layoffs.
Again it was in that letter from senior Air Canada director Stephen Knowles.
"This decision means that all cabin crew based in Winnipeg and Halifax will be surplus to the operation and subject to layoff as per Article 17 of the Collective Agreement."
You gotta love the oh-so caring language.
Surplus?
I thought that was how you talked about old army gear.
Not people.
Especially not people who have been the face of Air Canada and spent most of their working lives serving airline and those of us who fly it.
People whose lives have just been relegated to standby.
gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
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