The purpose of the directorate was to test food and drug samples as well as checking out food and drug manufacturing buildings. I considered it to be as good a place to work as any that I could imagine. My first program with the group was for reporting on pesticide samples. It was a large program and produced a monthly report that was very thick, with the large pages that were used in those days. Then I was asked to do the same sort of thing for aflotoxins, followed by microbiology, and many other projects. At one point I was working on fourteen of these reports along with four others that were all quite different. Each of the first group were the same programs with changes made for the codes and report wording.

One of my programs was the Adverse Drug Reaction files. All of these reports were stored in a file and then information could be extracted by entering one or more words to be used for searching. Years later I heard that it had grown into a huge file and the program had been updated to produce many reports.

A doctor from the laboratories asked me if I would do a special program for him. He had sheep that were pregnant and had electrodes going into both the mothers and the fetus. Drugs were given to the mother and electronic equipment got numbers over a period of time to see how much of the drugs were remaining in the mother and the fetus. I was pleased to do this because the subject was interesting.

Another doctor from the labs asked me to volunteer for a drug test with a group. We were given massive doses of sulfa first thing in the morning. Then every hour we gave needle prick samples of blood with a syringe full at the end of the day. The test was to see how quickly the drug cleared the system. After the completion of the test, about two weeks or so, one of my ears went up like a balloon, turning the ear red. Later the skin peeled off of it. My family doctor told me that I was alergic to sulfa. Some time later my mother told me that when I was fifteen and had pneumonia I was given the same drug and was highly allergic to it.

About a year after joining FDD I was promoted to CS2, a programmer analyst. In those days we used computers that were huge and cost a fortune. The programming was done in COBOL with the odd routine in FORTRAN. COBOL stood for Common Business Oriented Language and FORTRAN was Formula Translation. Those were the days when the computers were big but the memory was very limited and we had to take every shortcut that we could. The most common one was to store the year as two digits which has led up to problem that is facing everyone at the end of this year, Y2K (Year 2000).

After a couple more years I was promoted to CS3, Computer Systems Analyst, and made Head of Computer Services for Field Operations of the Health Protection Branch. FDD was reorganized and that was the new name. I preferred the first. Everyone knew what it was but no one knew what Field Ops was. The work was the same.

I designed a program that I named RCMP. It was to store information and produce reports on illegal drugs picked up by the RCMP and other police forces across the country. I found it very interesting and the reports were sent to a number of places in Canada and other countries, including Geneva, Switzerland. The only program that I wrote that the average person would recognize was to create the DIN (Drug Identification Number) for drugs produced in Canada. The DIN number can be seen when a prescription is filled.

Over the sixteen years that I was with FDD I wrote many programs and then in my last two years I gave up my position and was made Special Projects Officer.My main tasks were to go with a committee to our Regional Labs across the country and find out what the people at the other end really wanted with the intent of buying a mini computer to do the production. This was followed by setting up the requirements for a computer system and then meeting with representatives of the different companies and later selecting the one that most met our needs.

After my first couple of years we rented time on computers that were in Ottawa, then Montreal and then Toronto. We had to do our work using modems. Some of the computers took up to seven floors of a large building and cost about 80 million dollars. Costs were high. For example, we paid $1,400.00 for rental of 10 million bytes of hard disk space, per month. You can now buy a 6 billion byte hard disk for the home computer for about $200.00. The old disk was a number of plates in a container that was about 1 1/2 feet across and a foot or more high. The new ones are not much larger than a cigaret pack.

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While with Food and Drugs I worked in a five buildings. At the beginning it was the Food and Drug Building with the Laboratories included. This was in Tunney's Pasture. Tunney's Pasture is an area about four blocks by four blocks near the Ottawa River. Originally the property was owned by a farmer named Tunney. The government purchased the land and built an area of buildings. Some were two storied and some 22 stories.

We then moved to Tower 'A' in the Vanier building in Vanier at the east end of Ottawa. I remember that while I was there I went down to the cafeteria to pick something up. A TV was on and the final goal was scored in the first world hockey session by Henderson. It was in overtime of the last game and Canada won.

Next my group moved to the Queensway Tower, beside the Queensway, a highway that transversed the city from east to west.

Our next move was to a building on Argyle street, across the Queensway. It was a building that we could see from our offices in the Queensway Tower.

Finally we went to the General Purpose Building, a 22 story building back in Tunney's Pasture. What goes around, comes around. We were on the seventh floor.

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Wine & Cheese Party	Christmas Dance	Santa Too

 
Wine & Cheese Party   In addition to our lunches we had a lot of wine and cheese parties, especially after getting back to Tunney's. The left picture is one that we held at the Queensway Tower.

Christmas Dance   The Christmas Dance was held in the General Purpose Building in our space. I am dancing with our computer secretary. She is now a programmer and still with Health Canada, as it is now called.

Santa Too    Even Santa Claus joined us for our Christmas Party. He presented our exchange gifts to the personnel. All of our lunches and parties were most enjoyable.

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Queenway Tower	Queensway	Tunney's Pasture

 
Queenway Tower   The first picture above was taken showing the other side of the Queensway. The building with the string of windows, beyond the closer building, was the one that we later moved to, on Argyle street.

Queensway   The center picture is of the Queensway. It could get you across Ottawa in about ten minutes, where driving the streets could take a half hour.

Tunney's Pasture    The third shot was taken from our seventh floor of the General Purpose Building. In the background is Hull, Quebec, across the Ottawa River. The building shown is the Virus laboratory building. My wife worked there for a while.


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