Au revoir

Nobody likes goodbyes, I suppose. In fact, some people go out of their way to avoid them. When my mother used to come to Montreal to visit, she would stay at the airport hotel the night before her departure. She hated flying so much that a goodbye and a flight on the same day were just too much to bear. And some people seem incapable not just of saying goodbye, but of actually leaving. They're usually the ones gassing in your office just when you have a particularly tight deadline looming. A course I attended at McGill's Executive Institute once suggested preparing special furniture for people who seem to get krazy-glued to your carpet. The chair for visitors, we were advised, should have front legs slightly shorter than the back, so that settling in for a chat is not a comfortable option. Perhaps the hardest kind of goodbye is when you don't know whether you're coming back. No, I'm not planning a trip anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle, but after eight years as editor of the Reporter, I am taking something known as a "temporary developmental assignment" up the hill at Martlet House, mission central for Development and Alumni Relations. There I will fill in for Janice Paskey, editor of the alumni quarterly magazine, the McGill News, and manager of communications for DAR, who is expecting her first baby. It's a chance to work with great people in a challenging job and in one of McGill's historic buildings. But the key word in the situation is "temporary" and that's why finding the right goodbye style is so difficult. I could rhapsodize about how colleagues, experiences at the Reporter and contact with readers over the last eight years have changed my life. Trouble is, if I float back here like a bad odour in six months, it will all have seemed so...wretchedly excessive. So perhaps it's best to leave that loose end dangling, and instead, tidy up another. As I look back, there is one flap we never did settle. The harshest mail I ever received as editor concerned our use of the word "chair." We did this in accordance with a gender-neutral policy adopted by Senate years ago, but in cleaning out files, I recently came across an article in the Globe and Mail on the same issue. The article points out that the word "chair" appears in 1658 in a description of a debate in Britain's House of Commons. It refers to the Speaker of the House, and is an example of metonomy, where the sense of a word is shifted and is often associated with something human. "Other common examples," says the Globe and Mail, "are 'Crown,' 'bench,' 'bar,' 'cloth,' 'anchor,' 'staff,' 'cabinet' and the 'boards' over which chairs preside." Also cited is a comment from Webster's Dictionary which says, "It has been fashionable for a few years for persons unacquainted with the forms of parliamentary procedure to disparage the use of "chair" as an ugly creation of the Women's Liberation movement. There is, of course, no law that requires people to know anything about the history of what they disparage." Finally, as I look ahead, I know I leave the Reporter in the best of hands. Perhaps the friendliest mail we have had over the years is in praise of the writing of associate editor Daniel McCabe, who will take over as editor and who will continue to be most ably supported by our talented team. To them, good luck, and to our readers, au revoir. DIANA GRIER AYTON