Bed Sheets

The news that we are going to have to send our dirty laundry to Sudbury is a low blow for North Bay. Losing government jobs to the Big Nickle in the west is nothing new, and indeed no doubt a few private sector jobs have slid to Sudbury as well. We used to lose some junior hockey players to the barren rocks, but once we lost our whole franchise, that was of small concern. Before Nipissing University received its Charter, we were accustomed to seeing our sons and daughters heading off to the land of the glowing midnight slag heaps for their education. But our laundry?

It was encouraging to hear that our MPP apparently consoled the workers who will be losing their jobs that it was only business. Apparently MPP Smith thinks that politics is not business or conversely, business is not politics. The whole business of building our new Health Centre was based on political decisions, and one wonders how many more of these decisions will be made before the complex is completed. Maybe if the government and our MPP had offered to do a Present Value calculation for some private sector laundry and guaranteed them a 30-year contract to wash our bed sheets, the jobs could have been kept in North Bay. We could have bought one of those fancy washing machines with that kind of financing.

At first glance, bed sheets may not seem nearly as important as doctors and nurses, or caretakers and technicians, but having a nice clean white sheet and pillow case is important. Can you imagine going to a masquerade party as an elegant Roman couple dressed in dirty bed sheets? Bed sheets, called togas by the Romans, served a high purpose as they distinguished the upper class from the poor folks who had to wear old brown grain sacks. Adding a purple stripe to your bed sheet could make you into a judge or priest or even a MPP or Senator.

If you lived the South in the United States in the bad old days, you could dress up in a bed sheet and carry signs and torches as you harassed the black folk. You also needed a pillow case to stick over your head so no one could recognize you for the idiot that you were. Unfortunately, when they cut the eyeholes in the pillow cases, the seamstresses in the laundry room would not mend the white head covers, so the KKK sent all of its laundry up north to where the seamstresses were poor white folk, not poor black folk, and the laundry would return nice and white, just like new.

Of course it is more than bed sheets and pillows that will be making the trip to Sudbury for their bi-weekly cleaning. All the towels, washcloths, mats, gowns, smocks and surgical masks will enjoy the truck ride. They might even send up those short gowns that leave your behind exposed while you get your X-Ray up to Suds Bury. Maybe even some of staff dress shirts might fall into the laundry bag by mistake, one never knows. I sure hope they have all our North Bay dirty laundry monogrammed so we do not get some of Sudbury’s laundry in return.

If we started swapping dirty laundries from our hospitals, you never know where this could end up. We might even send our MPP up there by mistake and get theirs in return. On second thought . . .