M A C V A Y S I A

I know working on high-rise construction projects will inevitably involve some dangerous moments, but I wonder if workers should be balancing on rooftop beams (without safety equipment, at least that’s how it looks) like the guys in the video below, shot from my bedroom window.

It kind of reminds me of footage of construction workers building skyscrapers in New York, Chicago, etc. during the 1930s. Is that how far behind Malaysian safety standards are?

Oh, and try to ignore the blotchy stuff on the screen. My digital camera cleaning and storage standards apparently aren’t so good either.

UPDATE: A Facebook friend pointed out that the safety standards are already there (and that they include the requirement for construction workers like the ones in the video to wear harnesses), and that the problem is enforcement. I agree, but when compliance and enforcement are both sorely lacking (this certainly isn’t an isolated incident), I think a case can be made that the standards themselves aren’t good enough. And I should be clear that to me, in this case anyway, standards is a big-picture term that includes both compliance and enforcement.

I often find myself lamenting the lack of sidewalks here in Malaysia. Sometimes I think it’s silly to feel annoyed that there are so few real sidewalks here, but I just can’t help it.

Well, maybe it’s simply in my blood to feel that way: while googling for some further information on the members of my family mentioned in my previous post, I discovered that my great-granduncle Joseph MacVay’s son, William Alexander MacVay (technically my first cousin, twice removed), actually co-invented the sidewalk as we know it today. The Wikipedia article on sidewalks says:

Arthur Wesley Hall and William Alexander McVay invented concrete sidewalks and partitions in St. Stephen, New Brunswick in 1924.

The source given for that is page seven of a book called Memorable Maritime Inventions (1828-1930), which I can’t find any mention of online outside of references to sidewalks. Anyway, obscurity of the source aside, it’s an interesting little fact, and yet another reason for me to try to get in touch with Bill MacVay, William Alexander MacVay’s 89-year-old son.

And I still find it annoying that there aren’t a lot of sidewalks over here, but I kind of understand, given that it’s too hot to walk anywhere anyway. Sigh.

In my first post about the MacVay family, I mentioned that my great-grandfather, William MacVay, helped his brother Joseph (who was working with his son, also named William) build the railway station in McAdam, New Brunswick. Well, today I read a news article from New Brunswick that mentions the MacVays’ work.

The article provided me with a couple of interesting bits of information:

1) Apparently there was a master mason named Archie B. MacDonald who worked on the station. So my great-grandfather may have been MacDonald’s apprentice, which is a great bit of information for me because I’ve always wondered how and when William MacVay became a mason. In all the records and stories I knew of, he’d been working in lumber and carpentry and then suddenly he was a mason. Now I may have some perspective on his transition to that trade. However, MacDonald was younger than my great-grandfather (according to NB census records), so the teacher-apprentice relationship may have been the other way around. Also, apparently the station was built between 1900 and 1911. William MacVay moved to Cape Breton sometime in 1901, so I wonder how much of the stonework he actually did on that station.

2) William MacVay is alive! No, not my great-grandfather, but my cousin. Actually, he’s my second cousin, once removed. He’s also the only male MacVay descendant of Alexander MacVay outside of my immediate family. When I wrote that first post on the MacVays not long ago, I wrote that he had passed away, since I’m pretty sure another cousin told me he had. And yet there he is, alive and well, visiting the McAdam railway station with his sister. William and I used to write letters to each other; I think I’ll try to get in touch with him again. I’ve edited the original post.

Anyway, do check out the article. Great stuff, and nice to see another MacVay.