Three stalwart sons
areas) had invited me to dinner at his Providence home and our friendship grew from there, eventually including his brother Colin. Hugh was a trained professional, with an international reputation, and he had the same positive life attitude as Galton. Calumny and castigation didn’t abide in him. He came across always as a man enjoying his life, dealing with the setbacks, often seeing some humorous side to them, and moving on that way. Even when his health problems arose, I never heard a complaint come out of Hugh, and when his health worsened, I remember sitting with him in a car in Kitty, for a rambling gaff, in which his entire demeanour was one of onward and upward. Not one moan; not one angry cussword. I remember watching him as he drove away and thinking to myself, “What a reaction. What an inspiration.”
And the third one: this week, as I contemplated attending Chris Correia’s funeral, it occurred to me, close to the anniversary of Hugh’s passing, how much the one was like the other. My mind went back to 2008, when I met the Correia family through my wife Annette, and how I quickly saw that same “forward” attitude in Chris, as I had seen it in Hugh and Galton. When you live in a society, as I said, “strugglin we struggle”, that positive quality stands out a mile away. Like the other two, Chris had it in spades. Look at the photographs of him that are about: in almost every one he has this huge smile on his face, even in his eyes, or he’s mugging for the camera. The French have a term “joie de vivre”— meaning joy of life—which describes it; that was Chris. He exuded it. Living in Guyana, and going to this social occasion or that, I would immediately seek him out. I knew I wouldn’t hear any vitriol coming out of him. Even in dealing with the current “complaint of the day,” Chris Correia would have some humorous interpretation or explanation to laugh off the comment and move away from it. Even when the topic drew some edgy remark from me, Chris would give me his slow grin in response, or a couple of raised eyebrows, and not respond. Mind you, I didn’t work with him, so there may have been eruption in that arena; in the social one, I never saw it. We can posit that the influences of his wife Carol Ann, and his family of Anna and Alan, are in play, but whatever the reason, this was the guy. His close friend Gary DaSilva told me, “If you start to bad talk somebody, Chris would hold up his hand, ‘No, man. Don’t let’s go down that road.’ He was always like that, every time.”
We are fortunate to have these arbiters in our lives to help steer us away from the animus and turn us to some positive light; when they are taken from us we have suffered a loss. And it’s not only these three. Okay, they’re in the minority, yes, but they are there. And there are others – Joe Singh; Ian McDonald; Nigel Hughes, to name only three – and they exist on the distaff side, as well, former Government Minister Carolyn Rodrigues being one. We should be heeding those examples more. They are stalwarts with a positive balanced approach we would do well to adopt.