Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

For 23 years, St Mary’s Col­lege (CIC) Fete with the Saints has marked the high point of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val cal­en­dar.

From rel­a­tive­ly mod­est be­gin­nings on the school’s Fred­er­ick Street grounds to its grad­ual ex­pan­sion and tran­si­tion to its sports ground on Ser­pen­tine Road, St Clair, in 2015, the event is con­sid­ered by some to mark the of­fi­cial be­gin­ning of the Car­ni­val sea­son.

But more than sim­ply of­fer­ing pa­trons a mem­o­rable Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, the fete pro­vides a stream of in­come for the col­lege, con­tribut­ing to every­thing from up­grades to phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, di­rect­ly af­fect­ing the dai­ly lives of the stu­dent body.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, co-chair of the fete com­mit­tee and mem­ber of the CIC alum­ni foun­da­tion, Rober­to Ramirez said the pro­ceeds of the event keep the col­lege’s lega­cy and vi­sion alive in more ways than one.

“Go­ing way back when we did over the lan­guage labs, just be­fore the covid-19 pan­dem­ic we did over the Chem­istry, Physics and Bi­ol­o­gy lab, we got in­ter­coms for the school, we did over the toi­lets, we did air con­di­tion­ing of the hall, we air con­di­tioned class­rooms and re­alised the pow­er sup­ply was in­suf­fi­cient in the school so we got a new trans­former, so we got that and had it in­stalled.

“We main­tained the grounds; the fete pro­ceeds fund those types of things.”

The CIC grounds were found­ed in 1863, mak­ing it one of the old­est school com­pounds still in ac­tive use to date.

It’s for this rea­son that Ramirez said reg­u­lar up­grades to the fa­cil­i­ty it­self are not on­ly ex­pect­ed but nec­es­sary, with re­cent works strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ties of the build­ing.

“For the last two years, we have been paint­ing the school, and it isn’t just ap­ply­ing a coat of paint; we did civ­il work, so we had to chip away con­crete, treat the steel in­side the school.

“The clock tow­er was falling, we had to re­ha­bil­i­tate it, so it was a few mil­lion (dol­lars) well we spent ... it was sig­nif­i­cant civ­il work we have done.”

Just as im­por­tant as these up­grades, Ramirez said, funds are al­so put to­wards a spe­cial en­dow­ment fund in prepa­ra­tion for any chal­leng­ing times when fundrais­ing may be dif­fi­cult.

“The goal is for the day, if we face dif­fi­cult times, there is a bank we can go to so the school can con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing.”

And with the fete be­ing one of the school’s main rev­enue earn­ers, Ramirez said the as­so­ci­a­tion’s vi­sion has been to re­main rel­e­vant, of­fer­ing a qual­i­ty ser­vice peo­ple look for­ward to at­tend­ing.

For Joseph Had­dad, co-chair­man of CIC’s fete com­mit­tee, this means not just pro­vid­ing a fun Car­ni­val event, but an ex­pe­ri­ence that puts pa­trons’ com­fort first.

“It’s not just with artistes on a stage, but fix­ing the stage nice­ly, the pho­to-ops through­out the event.

“Yes, it is a Car­ni­val Fete, but peo­ple come out to have a good time. Through­out the ex­e­cu­tion, what we of­fer in terms of food and drink is a big, com­pre­hen­sive pack­age.

“We don’t run out of food or drinks. With all of the sup­port ar­eas like the pam­per­ing and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion zones, which have helped evolve the fete that is all-en­com­pass­ing.”

And while the price of tick­ets for the event is usu­al­ly high, Ramirez said this is jus­ti­fied by the qual­i­ty of the ex­pe­ri­ence to en­sure that every pa­tron re­ceives the best there is to of­fer.

“Peo­ple don’t come to fete with the Saints just to sup­port St Mary’s (Col­lege) any longer ... peo­ple come be­cause it’s a good fete or a good prod­uct.

“Mon­ey fol­lows qual­i­ty, so once you give a qual­i­ty prod­uct, peo­ple will come.”