SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sandy@gmail.com

Award-win­ning Mar­cus Bernard was a typ­i­cal school boy who loved both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, but was ea­ger to work be­cause he al­ways had an am­bi­tion to grow and try new things. Fol­low­ing grad­u­at­ing in 1972, Bernard wast­ed no time.

He quick­ly gained knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in the Cus­toms Bro­ker­age field, dis­tin­guish­ing him­self at many firms for a decade. This ex­pe­ri­ence then as­sist­ed Bernard in found­ing his own Cus­toms Bro­ker firm, Quick­lear Cus­toms Bro­ker­age.

The di­rec­tor/cus­toms bro­ker for four years im­me­di­ate­ly there­after, said while en­joy­ing his ca­reer, he was a chron­ic al­co­holic.

Bernard said his world was ac­tu­al­ly shrink­ing and be­com­ing dark­er, and at a point, he couldn’t help him­self. He was mis­er­able, felt em­bar­rassed; use­less, but made a com­mit­ment to starve the de­mon, which sad­ly ex­pand­ed to il­le­gal drug-use, co­caine, de­stroy­ing his life for six years.

“I was now a drug ad­dict and an al­co­holic,” stat­ed Bernard. “This was an even big­ger and heav­ier de­mon, and dark­er place.”

Bernard said de­spite feel­ing trapped, some­thing in­side him apart from the voic­es of fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends, was talk­ing to him. “It was God. God di­rect­ed me to Mount St. Bene­dict (MSB).

“I got in­volved in the drug-use re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ses­sions, and ow­ing to my im­prove­ment, I was in­vit­ed to join the staff. I be­came a drug re­hab coun­selor; be­came cer­ti­fied in Drug Coun­selling with School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies; spent 11 years at MSB, and a coun­sel­lor at Newlife Min­istries Drug Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre.”

Bernard re­called in 1990 hav­ing mi­grat­ed with his wife, cur­rent­ly a Psy­chi­a­try De­pen­den­cy Pro­fes­sor/Ad­dic­tion Psy­chi­a­try Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UWI), and be­gan vol­un­teer­ing four days week­ly as a drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion coun­sel­lor at the Shep­herd Pratt In­sti­tute in Mary­land, Bal­ti­more. His on­ly com­pen­sa­tion was lunch and a bus pass to get to and from, but one day some­thing in­cred­i­ble hap­pened.

Staff was go­ing on a re­treat of which he was ex­clud­ed as he wasn’t con­sid­ered staff, but odd­ly that day, a rau­cous en­sued at a par­tic­u­lar ward, which saw Bernard ap­ply his ex­per­tise to the ob­ser­va­tion of a se­nior staff mem­ber who was mon­i­tor­ing Bernard un­known to him.

“I was praised.”

Bernard said he re­turned to T&T and to MSB, and while he heav­i­ly weighed a Cus­toms Bro­ker $10,000 salary against a MSB $1,200 salary, God in­ter­vened again and di­rect­ed him to con­tin­ue help­ing oth­ers, so with God at the cen­tre, he ac­cept­ed a $1,200 salary, but in re­al­i­ty, it was not prac­ti­cal to lead a sol­id life. Bernard was al­so a coun­sel­lor at Mar­i­an House for Delin­quent Boys.

In Bernard’s at­tempt to re­claim sol­id fi­nan­cial foot­ing be­cause he had a young daugh­ter to as­sist with com­plet­ing a suc­cess­ful ed­u­ca­tion, he ac­cept­ed an in­ter­view at then-Neal & Massy (now Massy), but af­ter the “very suc­cess­ful in­ter­view,” the pan­el asked him if he had any­thing else he want­ed to say.

“I spoke of the salary I want­ed,” stat­ed Bernard, “But they in­sist­ed on hav­ing me say any­thing else I need­ed to tell them. I then came clean and told them that I was an ad­dict. As if now sat­is­fied, the pan­elists then shook their heads and com­mend­ed me. I then re­alised I had made a com­plete 180-de­gree turn around and be­came a bet­ter hu­man be­ing – a shin­ing light.”

Bernard’s daugh­ter Sasha Bernard DrPH, MPH, is cur­rent­ly a pub­lic health ed­u­ca­tor and founder/CEO of her NGO.

Last year (2025) Bernard re­ceived a Civic Award from the City of Port of Spain and this year on June 26, a Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Award from the City Cor­po­ra­tion.

From 2002-2009 Bernard served at Massy as Cus­toms Bro­ker man­ag­er and di­rec­tor, from 1986 to present he’s aligned with Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, and from 2009 to present he’s self-em­ployed as a pri­vate coun­sel­lor.

Bernard urges: “Stay clear of any­thing that ad­verse­ly al­ters your men­tal ca­pac­i­ty, and if you are al­ready de­pen­dent, sub­mit your­self and get cleaned.”