Duffy’s hate list seethes. It rages. It howls. It rains invective upon the fools with whom he is forced to share the planet.
The hate list has a cult-like following on Facebook, where readers track Duffy’s near-daily catalogue of all that torments him: Lazy journalism, Simon Cowell, spring days that feel like winter, the “unpractised drinking habits” of St. Patrick’s Day amateurs, dawdlers who ignore Don’t Walk signs (“time to cull the herd”). Those are just entries from March.
Last Tuesday, the TC’s Duffy heaped scorn on a consumer campaign to remove the dye from Kraft Dinner (“some things were meant to be dangerous and wrong … if you don’t want to eat a neon-orange-dyed food, don’t buy the bloody stuff”).
Before that, it was the use of the term “stars” to describe “the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, self-whores” of reality TV.
But here, dear reader, is the worst Duffy could summon after encountering Andris Freimanis: “Hate list today adds the fact that 99 per cent of the commissionaires handing out tickets for trifling parking infractions cannot hold a candle to the personable, incredibly cheerful, obliging and helpful gentleman who donned the blazer and met people as they entered the Passport Canada office Thursday. Well played, sir, you are a credit to a group that as a general rule are dead to me.”
That’s Duffy’s version of gushing.
The thing is, he’s not alone in singing the praises of Freimanis, who can indeed be found greeting visitors to Victoria’s Passport Canada office, within french-fry-smelling distance of the Bay Centre food court, each weekday morning.
“Don’t be reluctant, come on in!” the 68-year-old called out to an uncertain visitor poking his nose through the door the other day.
“Have a good chat and enjoy the moment,” he urged a batch of newcomers while shepherding them into the queue.
Freimanis jokes. He cajoles. He ensures applicants have what they need when they arrive, wishes them happy travels when they leave.
“People in general have a dislike and a fear of the bureaucracy of their government,” he says by way of explanation. “One of the things I try to do is make people feel they’re going to get very good service here, which they do.”
Clients emerge from the office looking happily dazed, like tourists after a day at Disneyland. This is a far cry from the overwhelmed post-9-11 passport office on Fort Street, where applicants would pay homeless guys to hold their place in a rain-soaked queue that snaked out the door and down the sidewalk for hours on end.
Pat McLeod, down from Nanaimo, stopped on the way out the door to tell Freimanis he’s the right man for the job. “He seems to keep a little bit of levity there,” she said. “He keeps people calm.”
“It’s an example of how attitude can make such a difference in dealing with people,” said Camosun nursing instructor Dianne Perry, pausing after her visit to the Bay Centre bureau. “It would be nice to see more of it.”
Freimanis, who describes Canadians as naturally helpful to one another, is not himself a native.
Born in Latvia, he lived in Germany and Belgium before moving to Quebec at age seven. He spoke French, had no English, but was still stuck in an anglophone school because he was a Protestant. “When I told that to René Lévesque, he laughed — though he did offer me a cognac after that and said, ‘We do make mistakes, don’t we?’ ”
Freimanis was a math and science teacher by the time he hit the West Coast in 1976, ended up as principal of the school in Tahsis before finishing off his career as superintendent of the Vancouver Island West school district.
He wasn’t retired for long before his wife, reading a Times Colonist story about a principal who had joined the commissionaires, urged him to follow. He did, and has been at the passport office for 5 1/2 years.
He does not find his attitude exceptional. “All the commissionaires have to like people,” he says, perhaps causing Duffy to snort single malt out his nose. Or perhaps Freimanis is proof that how people treat you mirrors how you treat them. Hate to see what would happen if we all give it a try.
