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with is a single-voice narrative of Mers Kutt, full of frustration
and hopelessness. Kutt confessed:
Forever etched in my mind is the picture of … Elliot,
without a concern, in front of all of us, as he walked to
the telephone and called the … bank executive … and in-
structed him to drop the receivership action against
MCM
.
In short, I succumbed to their offer to buy me out for pen-
nies on a dollar at $150,000 because they “blackmailed”
me. There is no more accurate word because they knew
I would not leave the company under any other circum-
stances; I did not want the company to go through a re-
ceivership. They had already triggered receivership action
against the company with the bank.
Kutt was devastated.
In the meantime, Rea and Laraya were waiting for Kutt in a
nearby hotel, hoping that Kutt would show up smiling at any
moment. “We stayed in a hotel there off Queen Street and drank
coffee all day and waited, waited, waited,” recollected Rea. It
was a long wait, during which they might have discussed the
recent layoffs at
MCM
that saw a number of people in Toronto
and Kingston packing their belongings into cardboard boxes
and leaving. During the 1 October board of directors meeting,
Kutt had reported that the amount of money left in cash and on
the bank loan account was barely sufficient for even one month
of operations. Kutt concluded that layoffs were inevitable and
urged the board to lay off most of the employees (including
some senior staff) immediately, leaving four or five people in-
volved in manufacturing. In response, Robertson suggested that
it was inadvisable to act so hastily in view of the agreement with
new investors (Chittick and Rotman) that would be most likely
be completed within a few days, bringing new funds. He sug-
gested delaying the decision for a few days. He pointed out that
