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Monday, July 7, 2025

‘A slice of Trinidad and Tobago’s history’

by

2794 days ago
20171112

Robert Clarke, the au­thor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian’s “A Cen­tu­ry of Ex­cel­lence”, speaks about the labour of love in doc­u­ment­ing the news­pa­per's 100-year mile­stone. The book, writ­ten by Clarke, a for­mer jour­nal­ist at the Guardian, is cur­rent­ly be­ing sold in lead­ing book stores na­tion­wide. The T&T Guardian has wit­nessed much of this coun­try’s his­to­ry, in­clud­ing our In­de­pen­dence, hur­ri­cane Flo­ra rav­aging To­ba­go in 1963 and the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup to name a few. Clarke told us ex­act­ly what the process en­tailed in con­dens­ing that cen­tu­ry in­to 228 pages, and why peo­ple should both­er to buy this book.

Q: What was the process like con­dens­ing 100 years of his­to­ry in­to 228 pages?

A: It was def­i­nite­ly a painstak­ing process be­cause first of all, the Guardian fire of April 1980 de­stroyed what was sup­posed to have been the best news­pa­per li­brary in the Caribbean. There was in­for­ma­tion at that li­brary dat­ing back to 1917 but with that fire every­thing was gone. Now, all the Guardian news­pa­pers be­fore 1980 are es­sen­tial­ly housed at the Na­tion­al Archives and they are bound in big fold­ers and you have to go in there with la­tex gloves and go through them care­ful­ly, es­pe­cial­ly the ear­ly news­pa­pers which are kind of falling apart. Some of them are crum­bling and some of them are in such a bad con­di­tion they don’t want to lend them to you. There is al­so the Guardian li­brary where there is a lot of the pho­tog­ra­phy, where some of the great Guardian pho­tog­ra­phers like Rudy Tay­lor and Noel Salden­ha were shoot­ing with film. So that part was nice, find­ing some of those im­ages. It was def­i­nite­ly an in­ter­est­ing process.

How did you de­cide on the struc­ture for the book?

The book could have been writ­ten a half dozen dif­fer­ent ways. Ob­vi­ous­ly peo­ple would have tak­en it from dif­fer­ent an­gles. I have to say thank you to Lu­cio Mesqui­ta, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, be­cause he had some idea about the form it should take. He want­ed a sec­tion on plus ça change, how things changed over time but have re­mained the same. And it was in­ter­est­ing to look for those things as I was go­ing along. So back in the 1940s peo­ple were com­plain­ing about the lack of cre­ativ­i­ty in Car­ni­val, and it’s the same thing now with pret­ty mas and biki­ni and beads. So that was in­ter­est­ing. The book nat­u­ral­ly evolved to a the­mat­ic struc­ture and al­so a news­pa­per sec­tion struc­ture rather than a chrono­log­i­cal struc­ture, so we did it by Sports, and Crime, and Pol­i­tics. It evolved in­to a the­mat­ic struc­ture as the ma­te­r­i­al was com­ing across and we re­alised that the most in­ter­est­ing way to present it would be the­mat­i­cal­ly rather than chrono­log­i­cal­ly.

What stood out to you most as you sift­ed through all of this in­for­ma­tion?

There were a lot of sto­ries that stood out to me in terms of the Guardian be­ing con­nect­ed to mem­o­rable na­tion­al events. In sports for ex­am­ple, Man­nie Dook­ie the bare­foot run­ner was be­ing sent off to the Em­pire Games by boat. This was back in the days when ob­vi­ous­ly our ath­letes were not trav­el­ling the world reg­u­lar­ly, it was a se­ri­ous en­deav­our to cross the At­lantic so the Guardian said it would spon­sor Man­nie Dook­ie and sent him off. So that was Guardian be­ing con­nect­ed to our na­tion­al his­to­ry very di­rect­ly. I al­ways knew him as the bare­foot run­ner, what was in­ter­est­ing was when they got him to the Em­pire Games he did run with­out shoes one day but that was be­cause he had corns on his feet not be­cause it was his pref­er­ence.

Then there was the sto­ry of avi­a­tor Mikey (Michael) Cipri­ani tak­ing the first plane­load of Guardian news­pa­pers ever to To­ba­go. Ob­vi­ous­ly at the time To­bag­o­ni­ans had to wait for the news­pa­per to come by sea which would have tak­en a while. So for the first time ever To­bag­o­ni­ans were go­ing to read the news­pa­per on the same day that it was print­ed, so Cipri­ani and his nav­i­ga­tor got in­to their air­craft, they flew to­ward the North­ern Range and they crashed (and died). The plane was found days lat­er, the Guardian sent out a search par­ty to look for him, and it was a huge na­tion­al event. Cipri­ani was a pop­u­lar per­son so the search for Cipri­ani was a huge event, but it was al­so in­ti­mate­ly tied to the Guardian’s own his­to­ry in its de­sire to ex­pand its dis­tri­b­u­tion and to make things more im­me­di­ate.

A news­pa­per is a prod­uct that comes out dai­ly, were there any days that the pa­per could not be print­ed?

There was the fire that knocked them down for months be­cause they could not print for five or six months and they tried to broad­cast a week­ly news pro­gramme to keep, first of all, the re­porters em­ployed and al­so keep peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in the prod­uct. There was al­so a walk­out and a strike just pri­or to that in 1979 which kept them down for a while. Then there was the coup. The coup hap­pened in Port-of-Spain, and for a cou­ple days the pa­pers did not come out.

Why should some­one get this book?

I think they should pick it up as a his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment. This is a news­pa­per that has sur­vived much longer than many in­sti­tu­tions. As a com­pa­ny it is still here, it went through times when it could have been gone, in the 1920s and the 1930s fi­nan­cial­ly they strug­gled great­ly, so the news­pa­per has had its ups and downs.

The fact is there was a re­al, tan­gi­ble prod­uct that was put out dai­ly and was much an­tic­i­pat­ed by many peo­ple be­cause it was at times their sole source of news, not that they did not have com­peti­tors but be­cause the Guardian had sur­vived and been around. I think it was looked to for what it pro­vid­ed. I think it is a very in­ter­est­ing doc­u­ment, it is a slice of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry, if you knew noth­ing about Trinidad and To­ba­go it will be a very in­ter­est­ing place for you to start with news­pa­pers be­ing the first draft of his­to­ry.

I think it was looked to for what it pro­vid­ed. I think it is a very in­ter­est­ing doc­u­ment, it is a slice of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry, if you knew noth­ing about Trinidad and To­ba­go it will be a very in­ter­est­ing place for you to start with news­pa­pers be­ing the first draft of his­to­ry.


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