Banking on Banking!

 

Regina, Saskatchewan. Winter 1963. Day 2.

I was waiting for Mac Chase, the business manager of the sixty doctor multiple specialty clinic, The Medical Arts Clinic where I was due to start working the following week. First I had to get to the bank to get some money. I arrived in Canada with a grand total of forty dollars, now whittled down to about ten. Mac had assured me there would be no problem, but as I sat waiting I could not avoid reflecting on my last visit to a bank when I had been practicing for a couple of years in the other London, where I was working in a general practice as a 'trainee assistant' -in a two physician practice on south side of London. It was a poorly paid job, but the doctors I was working for were decent pleasant people and they helped us to find a nice flat in a house that had been partitioned into two apartments. It was nicely if quite sparsely furnished and the owners were charming people. Tom had been a sergeant - major in the army and had that squeaky clean look that so many ex-army men had. Not a hair out of place, crisp collar, nicely knotted tie, pants pressed and shoes spit and polished so that you could see yourself in them. Their son Bill, was the manager of the local telephone exchange and when things were quiet he connected us up to Irene's sister in New York for a nice long chat, without charge. Transatlantic telephone calls were unbelievably expensive and we couldn't afford to phone very often.
Homes were heated mostly by coal fire with all the work and dirt that entails, and there was no heating in the bedrooms. After we noticed that our daughter's lips were getting a little blue on the cold winters nights we decided to buy an oil- fueled heater to warm up the room. The problem was I didn't have enough money so I decided to go to the bank for a loan. I made an appointment to see the manager to request a loan of a paltry twenty pounds (about $60 at the rate of exchange then).
I was a licensed physician at the time, albeit a new one and I was gainfully employed, albeit at an exiguous income. Nevertheless, I did not anticipate any difficulty in getting what after all, was a small loan.
I arrived at the manager's office at Lloyd's Bank and was shown in. After a rather uninterested greeting I was invited to sit down.
After establishing for himself that I was indeed a duly qualified practitioner and was gainfully employed, he got down to business.
"How much are you hoping to borrow ?" he asked in an unfriendly tone that suggested he felt the need to make it clear that this was a loan.
"Twenty pounds!" I said, knowing that this was a huge amount.
"And what's that for?" he asked in the same unfriendly tone."
"I need to buy a "Sankey Senator."
"A what?"
"A 'Sankey Senator paraffin heater,'" I repeated. "It's a sort of oil heater, I need it for my little girl's bedroom. It gets so cold in their her lips turn blue."
He looked at me disgustedly. "What sort of collateral have you got?"
"I haven't got any collateral."
"You've got a car, haven't you." he said.
"It's not my car, it belongs to the practice." I said.
"You must have some life insurance." he said caustically.
"A little."
"How much ?"
I said, ."A thousand pounds."
So if I died at age twenty-three my wife and baby would have had a whole thousand pounds.
The Bank Manager smiled. At last he had a solution.
"You just surrender the policy to us and we will hold it until the debt is paid off."
I surrendered the policy and the bastards returned it when the debt was paid off. I had got to this phase in my deliberations when the door bell rang. It was Mac.
"Let's go," he said. "We have an appointment with the manager of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in half an hour.."
Now I was going to see how a Canadian bank would treat me!

We arrived at the bank. As we walked in the door Mac was greeted by one of the tellers as though he was a long lost friend.
"You're here to see Jack?" she said. Jack was the manager. Nowhere in the British Isles would a teller be addressing the manager by his first name. Such familiarity would an anathema.
We were greeted warmly by the manager.
"Jack, this is Stan Smith , our new boy from the old country," said Mac,
"Stan this is Jack Ink, the branch manager (That was his real name!)."
Jack sat us down, asked us if we'd like a cup of coffee and said, "What can I do for you Stan?"
Mac said, "Stan is on the payroll as of the first of this month. He needs some money." That's all there was to it.
Jack smiled at me, "How much do you want, Stan?" Was he kidding me?
I smiled blandly back and tried to imagine a figure. "I don't know," I confessed.
Jack Ink pulled out his pen, took a sheet of paper and started calculating.
He scribbled for a while, then said, "How would five thousand be?"
The room started swimming and I wondered if I was going to fall off my chair. Had I heard him right? Five thousand dollars! How was I ever going to be able to pay that back?
"Er, well er, I suppose so, I said hesitantly, trying to figure out how I would ever be able to repay that vast amount.
"Don't worry, " said Jack Ink. "If that isn't sufficient just drop back in and we will increase it to whatever you need."
"Yep, that will probably do," said Mac Chase, "He has to buy a car and feed the family. The house rent is nominal - the Kings (owners) just wanted someone in the house over the winter months while they are in Florida."
Jack Ink gave me a cheque book and an account card, told me to drop in and see him anytime. It was quite a different experience than my bank experience in England.
From there, Jack drove me over to the General Motors dealership and introduced me to Doug Higgins, the most honest car salesman I have ever met. He was a tall, relaxed, well dressed guy who was never pushy and if he didn't think a car was a good buy, for whatever reason, would tell you so.
It was the days of big cars and very big cars. Gas was very cheap, forty-four cents a gallon, the same as a twenty-five pack of cigarettes. I bought a huge green eight cylinder Chevrolet Biscayne, that you could fit six people in easily, seven at a push. There was no such thing as seat-belts and the steering wheel was on the wrong side, but then they drove on the wrong side
I was ready to start work.
Next morning I got into my monstrous green Chevrolet and managed to negotiate my way to the Medical Arts Clinic, despite having to drive the monster on what to me was the wrong side of the road. The clinic was an impressive five story building on Eleventh Ave in the centre of Regina. In addition to the doctors offices and examining rooms, the clinic had its own Emergency Room that stayed open evening and weekends. It could deal with most non life threatening emergencies and by so doing it decompressed the emergency rooms in the cities two general hospitals. The clinic had its own laboratory and radiology department and the appropriate specialists to supervise them. All in all, outside of very highly specialized situations that only high population areas tended to see I was impressed that a comparatively small Prairie city could provide services of such quality. Furthermore, all essential services were covered by the Medical Care Insurance Commission (medicare).
For better or for worse, Saskatchewan was the birthplace of government insured medical care 'medicare' in North America. For a province only slightly smaller than the state of Texas, with a population of less than a million Saskatchewan punched a lot above its weight!!