Good afternoon  everyone,

 

How are you all doing today?

 

“Great”

 

What do you mean “great”?

 

Is it great to see Jane leaving us?

 

 (laughing)

 

And more specifically I want to ask Jane (anonym)  “how are you today? how do  you feel right now?

 

“I am good, and I want this party to be over and let us start to eat now” Jane responded

 

(laughing)

 

What? You did not have lunch? No worries, we have prepared a lot of food.

 

I, first of all, want to thank you all for coming in to celebrate Jane’s retirement. I also want to particularly thank Jane for showing up.

 

We had a planning committee for this event, we had everything planned out this time yesterday, except for one thing that worries us: what if Jane does not show up at the party?

 

And here she is. thank you Jane.

 

Jane wants us to keep this celebration low key, we respect that, so we have organized it as a low key event, we did not invite other departments, otherwise the entire floor would be full of people.

 

Even though we keep it low key, but the energy level here in this room does not seem low.

 

Can you all show your energy one more time please?

 

(laughing, clapping)

 

Sorry Jane, this is not low key, but I can not control the energy level here.

 

Just before the party began, one person asked me “Puxing, have you had your speech ready?”

 

I said NO, I do not need one, as I am not delivering a speech, I am not reading words from scripts, I am just saying what is in my mind.

 

I have a question for you: when talking about Jane, what comes to your mind?

 

You can share your thoughts later, but let me share mine first.

 

When I am thinking of Jane, the following 4 words pop up in my head: Business, Numbers, Supporter, and Visionary.

 

Business, Jane means business. For many years, not one, not two, but many her staff members told me that Jane means business, she is a tough cookie. None of her people is dare enough to miss a deadline Jane set.

 

Numbers, Jane is the Queen of numbers. Jane has a solid programming background, when she worked with xxx, she was asked to produce various reports on a regular basis, she was able to generate reports right in front of the requester. Therefore, she owned the title of Queen of numbers.

 

Supporter, Jane is a big supporter for all of us. I am looking around this room, I can say for sure  that each and everyone of us here has been supported by Jane both professionally and personally, not only at workplace, but also after business hours.

 

Do you agree?

 

“yes”

 

For that, let us give Jane a big shout out

 

“Yeah”

 

Visionary, Jane is a visioner.

 

Prior to the pandemic, Jane, I and a couple of other people were having a conversation, one person was saying that “we do our work on the phone, we do not see the public face to face,  we could do it from home”.

 

Jane stated with confidence that “yes, if I could, I would send people home, and work remote”

 

I was shocked by Jane’s statement. I thought that we provide public services, due to the nature of our work, it is impossible to work from home.

 

The pandemic proved that Jane was right and I was wrong.

 

As we all know that when it comes to public services, it is all about access. In order to provide more access channels for the City residents, Jane initiated in person services program, we go to  the community to serve the people where they live.

 

This program has been a huge success, and it has become part of Toronto Public Services (TPS).

 

That means Jane has left a big, heavy mark on TPS, very proud of you Jane.

 

Jane is leaving the City, leaving the workplace she loves for decades , but the program she created will be with TPS forever, just like Jane will be missed and remembered forever.

 

Thank you.