Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The din of the ar­bi­trar­i­ly resched­uled fire­works is now a faint mem­o­ry. Many build­ings are still draped in our na­tion­al colours but as Tri­nis are wont to do, we've al­ready moved on. The 50th an­niver­sary of our in­de­pen­dence was noth­ing more than an­oth­er hol­i­day; an op­por­tu­ni­ty for par­ty loy­al­ists to feed at the trough of gov­ern­ment largesse. Some street hus­tlers picked up spare change sell­ing flags to the pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly pa­tri­ot­ic and the rest of us just got drunk by the beach.

While this poor­ly stage-man­aged pap­py show achieved its crescen­do last week Thurs­day in the cap­i­tal city, else­where in the coun­try, the 50th mile­stone was ob­served with dev­as­tat­ing fi­nal­i­ty. McLeod House in Chase Vil­lage, great house of the once sprawl­ing Friend­ship Hall sug­ar es­tate and the repos­i­to­ry of some of our rich­est colo­nial his­to­ry was bull­dozed. The own­ers fought for years to stave off this out­come, strug­gling to raise funds to re­store the land­mark build­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems the de­cay just be­came too much. With­out so much as a whim­per, that ed­i­fice, at al­most 150 years old yield­ed to the scythe of progress.

I won't ex­pa­ti­ate too much on the his­to­ry of McLeod House. My dear friend An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh is more com­pe­tent than most to spin that lux­u­ri­ous yarn. When I fea­tured this mag­nif­i­cent struc­ture in an episode of The Road Less Trav­elled, I felt priv­i­leged to be there, to ab­sorb the po­tent res­o­nance of the ghosts of its past. The own­ers gra­cious­ly opened their doors to us show­ing off all of the trea­sures left be­hind by the very ec­cen­tric Scots­man, es­tate own­er Nor­man McLeod.

Even then the floor­boards creaked plain­tive­ly with age and I feared that my ex­pand­ing girth would be more than they could bear. Half the house had al­ready fall­en to the at­tri­tion of time. As­sis­tance to re­store the house just nev­er came and the McLeod house, along with all of its mem­o­ries, per­ished. You see, it wasn't just the house; it was the man who lived there.

Nor­man McLeod served in the East In­dia Reg­i­ment. Up­on tak­ing up res­i­dence in cen­tral Trinidad at the es­tate house, he im­part­ed all of his in­flu­ences of In­dia on the colo­nial build­ing. Nor­man McLeod was some­thing of an artist and he would repli­cate the Asi­at­ic li­on and Lord Ganesh, to name a few, in artis­tic re­lief all around this in­cred­i­ble house. All of this is now re­duced to rub­ble and dust. I was heart­bro­ken to vis­it the site; a lit­tle an­gry even that we all al­lowed this ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sure to "go gen­tle in­to that good night."

Beg­ging com­mis­er­a­tion from Rudy­lynn Roberts and Ge­of­frey MacLean of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion was tru­ly self­ish of me. They have suf­fered far greater heartache over the decades as they fought in vain to de­fend sev­er­al oth­er no­table struc­tures around the coun­try.

In­deed, Rudy­lynn re­mind­ed me that the sto­ry was much the same for her when the bat­tle was lost to save the old Bagshot Ho­tel, the Lee res­i­dence, Coblentz House and of course the abom­inable des­e­cra­tion of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion has worn out its wheels fight­ing for some­thing that should seem ob­vi­ous to all of us, the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of our ar­chi­tec­tur­al her­itage. But what is it? What is the source of our dis­dain for all things his­tor­i­cal at the in­sti­tu­tion­al lev­el?

The Na­tion­al Trust was es­tab­lished with the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion em­pow­er­ing that or­gan­i­sa­tion to earn the pro­tec­tion of these na­tion­al trea­sures. Un­der the act, the trust list­ed sev­er­al her­itage build­ings which would have been sub­mit­ted to the Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion. Un­der the guid­ance of the act, dossiers would be pre­pared on each build­ing us­ing di­verse cri­te­ria such as rar­i­ty, unique­ness, nat­ur­al or out­stand­ing beau­ty; you see, a list must be com­piled in or­der to gar­ner le­gal pro­tec­tion for the se­lect­ed prop­er­ties.

Cab­i­net, on the ad­vice of the Na­tion­al Trust, must as­sent to this list. But more than a decade ago the in­for­ma­tion was passed on to the of­fice of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al for le­gal opin­ion on the way for­ward. There, I un­der­stand, it has re­mained mired in a bu­reau­crat­ic bog from which there is no es­cape. It's cathar­tic to get pas­sion­ate and pelt cuss in every di­rec­tion in light of what has hap­pened to McLeod House, but that doesn't ac­com­plish any­thing. Have you seen the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en late­ly? Care to fath­om a guess as to what might be­come of Boissiere House now that it is on the block?

Rudy­lynn Roberts, Ge­of­frey MacLean and Chris­tine Mil­lar, among many ded­i­cat­ed oth­ers, have fun­nelled so much of their life force to this no­ble ob­jec­tive. Are we go­ing to al­low that sac­ri­fice to amount to noth­ing? Many oth­er ar­chi­tec­tur­al won­ders will share the fate of McLeod House un­less we do the right thing and de­mand their preser­va­tion. These struc­tures are an im­por­tant part of the cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty of our na­tion; they are what make us stand apart from many oth­er Caribbean coun­tries. And to lose them ... well, that is to lose an in­dis­pens­able part of our own souls.