?Hugh Hen­der­son

"Love is bet­ter than anger; hope is bet­ter than fear; op­ti­mism is bet­ter than de­spair." Jack Lay­ton, much loved and high­ly re­spect­ed leader of the Op­po­si­tion in Cana­da, died of can­cer last week. On his deathbed he wrote a let­ter to the peo­ple of Cana­da, and his last sen­tence is quot­ed above. As I re­turned to my beloved T&T on 25th to sur­vive with SoE re­stric­tions, my sin­cere hope is that every cit­i­zen in our na­tion will take Lay­ton's fi­nal words to heart to en­sure we turn around the neg­a­tives im­me­di­ate­ly.

Since I was away in Cana­da for six weeks, let me catch up with some pos­i­tives by con­grat­u­lat­ing the fol­low­ing:

• Derek Chin for win­ning the 2011 Der­by with Bears and Bulls em­u­lat­ing his Dad who won the 1947 Der­by with Atom­ic 11, which I re­mem­ber vague­ly as a child lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio. I am aware that there were neg­a­tive con­se­quences af­ter the race, but I need more facts be­fore I com­ment fur­ther.

• Jock­ey Ricky Jadoo on his 700th ca­reer vic­to­ry and for ded­i­cat­ing his land­mark to ex-jock­ey "Mal" Lewis who won on "Gold­en Buck" for me way back in 1965.

Ricky tops the pop­u­lar­i­ty polls among jock­eys with the vast ma­jor­i­ty of rac­ing fans, and I clear­ly re­mem­ber when he phoned me cir­ca 1990 say­ing he was think­ing of giv­ing up rid­ing be­cause he was get­ting no en­cour­age­ment from any­one.

I like to think I may have said some­thing to make him be more pos­i­tive. Well rid­den Ricky and con­grats on a won­der­ful ca­reer full of charm, in­tegri­ty and un­fail­ing good man­ners. You are a great ex­am­ple to the young jock­eys.

• Woman sprint­er Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste for fin­ish­ing sec­ond in the 100m at the re­cent track and field meet at Crys­tal Palace in Lon­don. I was able to watch most of the meet on TV in Toron­to and leapt for joy when I wit­nessed Kel­ly-Ann's stun­ning fin­ish. Good luck in South Ko­rea!

• Sher­win Gan­ga's amaz­ing bowl­ing analy­sis of 5–15 in 3.5 overs in­clud­ing a hat-trick against Afghanistan in the re­cent tri-na­tion T-20 tour­na­ment in Cana­da which T&T won. I drove over an hour to at­tend the match and as a diehard Sher­win fan, was thrilled to wit­ness his mem­o­rable ef­fort.

• Golfer Stephen Ames was one of four top play­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the Skins game which took place on the mag­nif­i­cent scenic course at Banff, Al­ber­ta. Stephen was se­lect­ed to star in the TV ad­ver­tise­ment invit­ing every­one to vis­it Al­ber­ta and the many fab­u­lous views dis­played sat­is­fied me that the Rocky Moun­tains must be the most beau­ti­ful area on the plan­et. In 1958 dur­ing my first sum­mer at Uni­ver­si­ty I was for­tu­nate to work at the ritzy Banff Springs Ho­tel as a life­guard which al­lowed me to look down every day at the panoram­ic Bow riv­er wind­ing through the golf course on which Stephen was play­ing, snow capped moun­tains in the back­ground. The fol­low­ing sum­mer I worked at Lake Louise ho­tel which is even more stun­ning than Banff if you can be­lieve it. I felt very proud to see Stephen not just play­ing golf but be­ing se­lect­ed to take the lead role in the im­pres­sive TV pro­mo­tion.

• It was won­der­ful to keep read­ing of the on­go­ing suc­cess­es of our amaz­ing 13-year-old ta­ble ten­nis stars Brit­tany Joseph and Arun Roop­nar­ine in their var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments abroad. Oth­ers al­so did well but I hap­pen to know Brit­tany and Arun through Daren Gan­ga's Foun­da­tion so I could iden­ti­fy more with their suc­cess. Their track records at this age are awe­some.

• Noth­ing to do with sport, but I want to con­grat­u­late our po­lice­men who re­fused to with­hold their ser­vices when en­cour­aged by mis­guid­ed lead­ers to do so a few weeks ago. Well done ladies and gen­tle­men. Please pat your­self on the back in the knowl­edge that we are very proud of you. Those who did not re­port for work hope­ful­ly will look for an­oth­er job as they were ob­vi­ous­ly not born to keep their pledge to pro­tect and if one's word means noth­ing, that is in­deed very sad.

• Yes­ter­day (26th) I at­tend­ed a sur­prise lun­cheon to cel­e­brate Daren Gan­ga's pass­ing his fi­nal law ex­ams. For years I have watched Daren jug­gle his time to com­bine crick­et, stud­ies and his Foun­da­tion with all his many com­mit­ments to var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions and more than ever he must be ad­mired for his en­er­gy, am­bi­tion, need for sac­ri­fice and ex­tra­or­di­nary self-be­lief. Could our chil­dren have a bet­ter role mod­el to em­u­late?

While there is much to cel­e­brate, I need to ex­press my per­son­al sor­row with Pat Bish­op's pass­ing. We shared a love for opera and beau­ti­ful singing and maybe lat­er I will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­late a sto­ry or two about Pat. Au­di­ences of­ten called the mu­sic of the Ly­di­ans "heav­en­ly". Now Pat will know what true heav­en is all about and has prob­a­bly al­ready or­gan­ised an ap­pro­pri­ate choir of an­gels and saints to wel­come us when our num­ber is called. Wouldn't that be some­thing else?

I al­so want to men­tion the hor­ri­ble ac­ci­dent which in­volved jock­ey Kurt Rag­birs­ingh last week while rid­ing a race at Mar­quis Downs track in Saska­toon, Cana­da. He was bad­ly in­jured as his horse fell and he was tram­pled by oth­er run­ners but I was ad­vised yes­ter­day (26th) that he had left hos­pi­tal to re­cu­per­ate at home. Kurt is the most spe­cial of all the jock­eys to me, as he is the one who helped me from day one in 1989 to put the jock­eys in some sort of or­der, did all the bank­ing to en­sure that their bank ac­count was man­aged with in­tegri­ty. He al­so worked with me as a couri­er at Bet­ting Levy Board, Neal and Massy Hold­ings and SM Jaleel where he was uni­ver­sal­ly re­spect­ed for his hon­esty, cour­tesy, re­li­a­bil­i­ty, will­ing­ness to please, punc­tu­al­i­ty and su­per-cool tem­pera­ment.

He was kind­ness and gen­eros­i­ty per­son­i­fied and of­ten helped my wife and me with home as­sign­ments over the years. When I phoned the hos­pi­tal last week Kurt was un­able to speak but I sent him a card wish­ing him a speedy re­cov­ery and re­mind­ed him how spe­cial he is. If any­one is read­ing this, please say a prayer for Kurt. Thank you!