Canadian Coast Guard
<% else %>A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton
The Waiting Years
From the publication of the Casey report of 1877 until the Civil Service Amendment Act of 1908, the progress of reform was slow and uncertain despite a number of investigations and Royal Commissions into government staffing. During this period, and indeed for many years thereafter, the exercise of patronage was extensive in the outside service and many dismissals and replacements were made on purely political grounds. In the "Inside" or Departmental Staff the permanent civil servants, legally holding office "at pleasure", were in fact protected against dismissal, although entry and promotion were often subject to conditions quite at variance with the merit system of today. As a result of all this the Department of Marine and Fisheries settled down to a comfortable jogtrot of precedence and custom which, if nowadays far short of acceptable standards, was then in tune with the facts of life. Good, bad or indifferent, these facts were understood by all and if it was difficult for a person without connection to enter some branches of the service with hopes of a future career, at least he could settle down to work in the knowledge that there would be no shortage of applicants for his position should it become vacant.
George J. Desbarats.
1861-1944
A civil engineer, Mr. Desbarats had wide experience on canal and St. Lawrence work before becoming director of the Government Shipyard at Sorel in 1901. He was Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries 1909-10, Deputy Minister of the Naval Service 1910-22, Deputy Minister of National Defence 1924-32.
Mr. Desbarats is wearing levee dress of the civil uniform worn by Privy Councillors, Ministers and Deputy Ministers on state occasions.
(Department of National Defence)
Despite this background results were obtained and, if the system produced an occasional misfit such as Captain Cooper, it also produced, by very similar methods, such men as Bernier, Scott, Gordon, Walbran and many more who built a marine reputation, Risley and Smith of the steamboat inspection service, and administrators of the calibre of Desbarats, remembered with admiration to this day, who eventually raised the working of the Department to a more modern standard.
Sometimes, men of this type alternated between sea and headquarters appointments, or to senior positions in the outside service and, there being no administrative classification of staff, they served in clerical grades. Colonel F. F. Gourdeau for example, who was Deputy Minister from 1896 to 1909, was promoted through the various levels of clerkship to become chief clerk and accountant of the Department before succeeding to the Deputy's desk. Andrew R. Gordon, who had commanded the Neptune and Alert in the Hudson Bay expeditions, was at Ottawa with the rank of chief clerk and the duties of nautical adviser in 1891, the year in which he later took command of the entire fleet. And it was in 1891 that an appointment was made, at a conspicuous if junior level, which would herald an entirely new era in office life. At the end of a list of extra clerks, engaged at daily rates of pay ranging from $1.50 to $4.00, appears the name of Miss Doyle, who became a private secretary at $600 per annum, and was the first woman to enter the service of Marine and Fisheries in her own right rather than as wife of a light keeper or in a husband and wife team of the outside service.
Although by no means the first woman to hold a staff position in the entire civil service, Miss Doyle was one of the pioneers. At Confederation, there were probably no women employees and, although it is thought that there was a housekeeper employed about 1868, a footnote to a Royal Commission Report of that year states that " . . . it is not proposed hereafter to employ female housekeepers." Perish the though! By 1881 there were a few women clerks in Parliament Hill but their presence gave rise to serious misgivings in the official breast; another of the interminable Royal Commissions, happening to table a report then, opined fearfully that:
". . . they should be placed in rooms by themselves . . . under the supervision of a person of their own sex . . . and it would certainly be inadvisable to place them in small numbers throughout the Departments."
Miss Doyle, all on her own and either less or more fortunate according to point of view, thrived in the salty atmosphere of the Marine Department. Perhaps because she was the only woman on the staff, her capabilities and ambitions were realized when, in 1892, she was transferred to the permanent list as a 3rd. Class Clerk, accepting the lower salary of $450 in recognition of opportunity. Miss Doyle was a great success and, by 1897, she had risen to a 2nd. Class Clerk at a salary of $950 per annum, probably as secretary to the Minister.
Typewritten letters began to appear in the early nineties, alternating in old files with a marvellous variety of script. Although the first typewriters were clumsy by modern standards, the frame being reminiscent of the entablature of a marine engine, they opened up an entirely new prospect for women who were taken on the staff in increasing numbers. By the early nineteen hundreds any fears, or hopes, which might have been entertained as to the moral supervision of women in the caverns of officialdom, had given way to ponderous male thinking on the question of salaries. If all the junior positions were to be filled with women, which appeared most likely, how could young men enter the Department in the learning grades before graduating to the more senior positions required to support a family? The involvement of this subject reaches far outside the confines of this work. May it suffice to say, in this more logical age, that the Department would collapse without its female staff and that one of the worlds better known Arctic scientists, Miss Moira Dunbar, is a frequent and welcome traveller in the polar icebreakers and aircraft of the Canadian Coast Guard.
Conditions in the West Block headquarters of the Department were not unpleasant. The staff would walk or bicycle to work, those living farther away arriving by electric street car. In 1914 the official hours ran from nine till five on weekdays with one o'clock closing on Saturdays. Lunch was a moveable feast, the regulations stating merely that the Deputy Minister might grant an intermission between noon and two, the actual duration not to exceed an hour and a half. Attendance sheets were signed in much the same way as they are today but clerks on the ministerial or deputy staff were exempted from this obligation as, of course, were the senior officers. Smoking was prohibited to clerks in office hours, bicycles were not allowed to be parked in corridors, and clerks were warned not to make a habit of using the telephone. Typists, who were not even mentioned in connection with smoking, were strictly enjoined to neither phone nor be phoned.
The staff of the Quebec Marine Agency in the nineties.
The filing system was superficially similar to that of today but the style of letters was more formal; in content they often dealt with matters which would nowadays be considered of purely local discretion. This tendency to refer matters to headquarters varied from time to time according to conditions and the personalities involved. In principle, the government service was a line organization where the responsibilities of the Minister were converted into executive actions through a chain of command; periodic sorties from Ottawa attempted to ensure that all was well in the best of all possible worlds. Events did not always reflect this theory and if the appointment of marine agents at Confederation had been intended as a necessary measure of decentralization, there were times when headquarters thought nothing of granting or withholding permission to repair a lifeboat or paint a shed, commenting on the price of consumable stores, or ordering the detailed movements of a steamer. The tendency was particularly noticeable in the depression years of the thirties.
This apparently close supervision, difficult to apply and of questionable efficacy, was less apparent in the early years when many officers of the outside service enjoyed a position of eminence. In Quebec, for example, the marine agent appointed after Confederation was Mr. J. U. Gregory who held the position for forty years, from 1867 to 1907. In addition to supervising the aids to navigation and supporting ships, Gregory was also fisheries officer, superintendent of river police and harbourmaster, receiver of wrecks and representative of the British Board of Trade. The marine agent was, in private life, an enthusiastic yachtsman, owning the 47-foot sloop Hirondelle while Commodore of the Quebec Yacht Club from 1885 to 1887. This little yacht was not only a well known cruiser on the St. Lawrence but was something of a salon where her owner entertained a wide variety of people, from the Governor General to his more intimate friends. A man of letters with an interest in the literary world, Mr. Gregory was a close friend of Sir James MacPherson Le Moine, President of the Quebec Literary and Historical Society, and himself wrote a small volume of reminiscences entitled En Racontant.
It was due to Mr. Gregory's persistence that the Napoleon III was saved after being damaged in the great ice shove of 1874 when many steamboats and schooners were swept away from their berths at Quebec in a heap of tangled wreckage, fortunately without loss of life.
Mr. J. U. Gregory, Marine Agent at Quebec, in his office about 1893. Mr. Gregory was a man of many interests, including literature, wild-life and sailing. Note that although the telephone was then in use, the premises had not been fitted with electric light. The bust of Sir John A. Macdonald recalls his cruise to convalescence in the Druid after suffering a stroke in 1870. He sailed in this ship on several occasions.
It was in May of that year that the ice gave way at break-up and the Napoleon, with crew aboard and steam up for the first trip of the season, was swung against the corner of Blais wharf, had her sides crushed in, and sank in fifteen feet of water. On receipt of this news Ottawa decided to sell the vessel as she lay. Meanwhile Mr. Gregory, with the help of Louis Gagne the master carpenter of the Quebec agency, got the damaged hull into dry dock and, after survey, came to the conclusion that it could be saved. At this point headquarters temporised and considered converting the vessel into a lightship but, on Gregory's persistence, she was finally given a complete refit. With the addition of a spar deck for additional lighthouse supplies, the Napoleon went on to give many more years of service. In those days money for new ships was hard to come by and Gregory well knew the value of his powerful steamer to the shipping of the St. Lawrence.
One has only to look at a photograph of the Quebec office taken in Mr. Gregory's time to appreciate the atmosphere. The polished mahogany woodwork of the reception counter, the confident attitude and formal attire of the staff, speaking alike of a prestigious service and a marine agency worthy of the ancient port of Quebec.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the administrative structure of the Department, hitherto almost without change since Confederation, began to assume a more modern appearance. On the technical side, the position of General Superintendent of Lights was enlarged to the style of Chief Engineer of the Department. Mr. W. P. Anderson, the first officer to hold this appointment, was an engineer of long experience in the lighthouse business who had worked his way up as an assistant and had
constructed many of the aids to navigation. Like other senior officers of the period he ranked in the various grades of clerkship until the technical specialties began to be recognized officially. Mr. Anderson had wide responsibilities and looked after the tidal survey and hydrographic work as well as aids to navigation. On the outside staff, men of the calibre of William J. Stewart the hydrographer, and
Dr. W. Bell Dawson the civil engineer in charge of the tidal survey, were among a growing number of Canadian engineers engaged in field work. It was an exciting period in the development of our shipping routes and the technical side expanded rapidly as the work became more complex.
By 1900, the chief engineers division had an annual output of some 500 new designs and plans for aids, numerous technical specifications, and the promulgation of Notices to Mariners on 200 subjects. Two years later, with responsibility for construction and repair of lifeboats, lightships, fog alarms, buoys and beacons, to say nothing of fish hatcheries and refrigerators, this versatile organisation was working continuous overtime to keep pace. The work was divided in 1903 when Mr. J. F. Fraser, previously the engineer in charge of aids on the St. Lawrence River, was appointed commissioner of lighthouses.
Despite this professional enterprise, the technical people were behind the times in one respect, they were slow to realise the contribution to be made by women. As late as 1906, records show that "Mr. L. Matton was appointed as a typewriter etc. at $41.66 a month." However, if indeed there really was a prejudice against women employees, it was short lived as they are listed as typists and stenographers within a few years.
In all this development, there was tremendous opportunity for young engineers, many of whom were sent from Ottawa to erect the piers and lights. Often in very isolated places, these men were pioneers, not only in the engineering sense, but also in fact. Sometimes the appeal of the old rugged Canada, stretching far from the demure lawns outside the West Block, was too strong to resist; an entry in the early nineteen hundreds records the departure of a draughtsman to join the Northwest Mounted Police.
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