A little after 4 p.m. EDT on Aug. 14, 2003, downtown Toronto went dark. Rob Shier, senior vice-president and chief operations officer with CIBC Mellon, recalls that his immediate reaction was, “Oh, this floor has lost power.” It was several minutes before he and his staff realized that it was the whole building, then, after a glance out the window, the buildings across the street, too. Soon enough, the full scale of the blackout—encompassing Ontario and much of the northeastern and midwestern United States—became apparent.
Power or not, there was still work to be completed before the day’s end: striking the NAV (net asset value) for mutual funds. “That is a huge exercise at the end of the day when we’re getting pricing from vendors on securities,” explains Shier.
CIBC Mellon had a diesel generator to power critical business operations and a small number of desks during a power outage. About half the staff in the fund accounting department remained to finish the day’s work; those whose work could wait till the next day headed home.
Shier says one of the things that amazed him during the crisis was finding out what employees were willing to do for the company. “Given the challenges people had getting home, the number of people in at the office the next day was unbelievable,” he says, recalling that one employee who walked home on August 14 to the north end of the city still showed up for work the next morning. (Shier himself stayed in the office overnight.)
He also remembers that, while employees were willing to work in the darkness, they drew the line at the idea of missing dinner. “Folks were more than happy to stick around and bear a little discomfort in terms of the desk they might have had to use, for example, but they wanted to know how they were going to get fed.”
Many downtown restaurants had closed up, unable to cook without electricity. Shier recalls that one employee went to the building’s food court to scrounge up leftovers from the vendors. “We managed to pull together a buffet of sorts.”
Though the power was back on in the office at about 8 a.m. the next day, most of the restaurants remained closed. But a little café was open in the CIBC Mellon building lobby, so Shier let staff know that the company would cover meal expenses. “The lady got cleaned out. Her shelves were literally bare of every chocolate bar, bag of chips. It was a great day for her,” he chuckles, “but we got billed.”
Brooke Smith is managing editor of Benefits Canada. brooke.smith@rci.rogers.com
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