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Bahamian Grammy Political Views - Sun Sep 25, 2005

Mum came from poor beginnings. She was a laundress most of her life. She says that all men are dawgs. It came from her one love affair that produced me. She was in love. My putative father wanted a sweetheart. After it ended badly, I was born. Apparently another woman in the maternity ward was also carrying 'his' child. After that Mum sort of gave up on men and turned to Jesus. I sometimes used to wish that she tried other men instead of the strict injunctures that came from the Bible. I thought that 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' was the biggest piece of eschatological bunk that there ever was.

I never heard Mum talk much about politics. She had no truck for it. When erryone else was talking about Black Moses and Ping, she knew his sweetheart. Everything in her life was coloured by the events that produced me. Consequently Ping was on the level of dog dirt, and that attitude sort of rubbed off on me.

But Mum initially didn't like Brits as well. She figured that they was too high and mighty, coming to the Bahamas, and because of their skin colour, jumping to the head of the queue when it came to gathering in the largesse of life. And as for the Queen -- there was no way that royalty should be royalty. There was no way that Bahamians, as the Queen's subjects were children of a lesser God. That attitude rubbed off on me as well.

Then a Brit came into our lives, who was to be the most powerful influences on both of our lives. His name was Richard, and Mum did his laundry. I delivered it. Richard was ex-British Army, and he would invite me into his house, as he went to look for money to pay me. He called his change 'pocket shrapnel'. It is a term that I still sometimes use today.

Richard's study was fascinating. But central to his study was a portrait of General Charles Napier. Napier was the general that captured the Indian province of Sind. Once he did so, the Army turned on his, as did his aide de camp. They excorciated him, and denigrated him.

The battle was horrific. The Indians lost close to 3,000 and Napier lost 270. There was backstabbing, innuedo, and such, and Napier was unjustly relegated to the backwaters of history. According to Richard, he was just doing his duty to God, Queen and Country. It was the first time that I heard the phrase "God, Queen and Country". I went home and told Mum, and she just harrumphed, and told me to wash up.

On my next visit to Richard's house, I asked him more about Napier. He told me an interesting story that whetted my intellectual curiosity. After the battle, entire England was waiting for news of the outcome. Napier sent a messenger to the closest telegraph station. He telegraphed the Foreign Office and Army headquarters with just one word in Latin -- "Peccavi". It was a clever pun. Peccavi is Latin for "I have sinned". Of course, Napier captured the Indian subcontinent province of Sind. All of the boys in the Foreign Office were classically educated and immediately understood.

I came home and told my Mum about Napier. Her response was something like 'There go the Brits sticking their noses in errybody's business. Look it how they sent that failed king Edward and his adultress wife to be the Governor General of the Bahamas.'

Richard fired my imagination, and I began spending more and more time at his house when I delivered his laundry. He started lending me books. He treated me as an equal, even though I was a little black kid, and he was a retired Brigadier General.

He taught me the rudiments of Latin, including the stuff like Semper Ubi Sub Ubi (always wear underwear) and Illegitamae non carborundum (don't let the bastards grind you down).

Eventually, Richard approached me with an idea. He would educate me -- in Latin, in mathematics, in English, and most importantly in Europe. He spoke to Mum. Mum was going through an incredibly rough period at the time making ends meet. Mum cried and cried and prayed, and eventually she found peace in the idea of letting me go off to boarding school in the UK. I was well on my way to become a classicist, a royalist and a philomath. It was also the seminal event of my life that would separate me from the Bahamas in a profound way.

I grew to love Richard as a father, especially since I had never known one. He showed me the profundity and reconditeness of the human spirit in the way that he took me in and loved me as his own. He called me 'Son' and treated me as such till the rest of his days. It became difficult in school and with authorities with the fact that he was just my guardian with no legal standing. With Mum's blessing, he adopted me, and I proudly took his surname. His friends and acquaintances all looked in askance as he introduced me as his son. They all thought that he had a secret tryst in the Bahamas, and I was in fact his actual son with a Black woman.

So I grew further and further from my humble roots and my mother. Various tertiary schools in the UK and France held my interest for a while, and when it became apparent that I had to get on with life, I found that I had no marketable skills with all of the University that I had. My adoptive father had some colleagues who lived in Canada, and they recommended an engineering school. My adoptive father was patient and generous with funding my education.

Canada is a different place. Indeed the country is a royalist backwater, and a who mass of contradictions. It is the only country on earth that has liberalised pot smoking while still maintaining an ambitious hardworking peoples who are extremely tolerant of cultures and differences. Contrary to the United States, Canada is not a melting pot. It is a cultural mosaic. Seikhs wear there turbans even though they join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Eventually, I grew closer to Mum. She wasn't doing that well as she got older in the Bahamas. The cost of living was rising. She had a mere pittance from the NIB. I begged her many a time to join us in Canada, and each time she refused. However, as she grew older, she became more and more terrified of hurricanes. Last September with Frances and Jean on the way, Mum gladly came to holiday with us until hurricane season was over. Before it was over, every earthly possession that Mum left behind on Grand Bahama was destroyed by the hurricane. She stayed with us in Canada.

She started a successful business with Miss Knowlton, is taking driving lessons, is a bit of a minor celebrity at church, and has settled in nicely to the Great White North. The last step in closing the circle of life, was to make Mum into a classicist and a Royalist. That happened last week.

Canada once again did something extremely progressive. They took a young Black Haitian working mother immigrant and made her the Governor General. In our country, the Queen of England is the Queen of Canada, and the Governor General is the Queen's representative in Canada. The Governor General, while in office is treated as royalty, and is given a virtual castle -- Rideau Hall as an official residence, and is bestowed with all sorts of honours by the Queen, the Empire, the Commonwealth, and the country. That womans name is the Her Excellency Micheal Jean. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, because she is a French (and English) speaking Black woman, and is married to a white Francophone who has professed sympathy in the past with Quebecers who wanted to separate from Canada. But the quickest way to cure a separatist, is to make them part of the main club and they quickly ditch their proletarian ways.

Governor General Jean was officially installed last Thursday. The whole Caribbean Community in Ottawa was abuzz, and they all turned out on Parliament Hill. Not only did you have the Haitians, but the Jamaicans, the Trinis, the Dominicans, the Cubans, the Bahamians and every single Caribbean nation was well represented. The Caribbean was sending one of her daughters into royalty, and they wouldn't miss it for the world. Mum and Miss Knowlton had to go.

By all accounts, it was a majestic ceremony filled with pomp and circumstance. The military was out in full force with marching brass bands. The navy provided an honour guard. The airforce was there. She was given the royal salute by the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. The General's FootGuards with their huge black bearskin caps paid special tribute to their new commander in chief. The Governor General is traditionally Colonel-Captain to several regiments and there was the trooping of the colours. Every politician of every stripe was there, including diplomats from the G8 and indeed countries around the world.

Mum cried. She was moved to tears when she saw the young Black woman who came to this country as a penniless refugee, and now rose to royalty. Mum also had a blast communing with the rest of Caribbean community that lives in the city. She has a whole new pile of telephone friends as a result of the installation ceremony -- particularly she struck it off with a Jamaican woman who is almost in the same circumstances as she is.

I got home from a business trip yesterday. She told me all about her day on Parliament Hill. She talked and talked and talked. She was positively beaming. Like the mainspring on a clock, she eventually began to wind down. She was sipping her peppermint tea and became a little pensive.

"You know" she said, "I am an immigrant as well, just like Governor General Jean." I nodded my head in approval. My anti-royalist mother was coming around. She then drained off her tea and said "Well it's about time that a Bahamian was Governor General after she is finished with the job. Son ... how does one become Governor General ?? ????? ??? ??? ???? ?????"

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