Canadian MP and St George’s College
MY FIRST child was born in Canada. When Nadine Chang Dupre was born in 1974, I was still an MBA student at McGill University in Montreal.
Her mother, Angela, and I returned to Jamaica, with her, shortly after.
While she lived here until she was around seven and actually attended the Holy Childhood High School for two terms from when she was 11, she has spent the rest of her life abroad.
She is now a successful lawyer in the US.
Yet while both her mother and I are ‘born yah’ Jamaicans and she has continued to visit Jamaica at least once per year, Nadine has never actually applied for Jamaican citizenship.
Nevertheless, having the qualifications, since she was born within the Commonwealth, I am thinking of getting her to ‘return’ to enter representational politics in Jamaica.
But Nadine could actually continue to live abroad and visit her ‘home’ country to attend Parliament just once every other week. That would be better than what is the practice, judging from the attendance records, of some of our MPs.
PNP/JLP, couldn’t you use ‘Squeaky Clean Nadine’ or ‘Nadine – the Queen’ as your candidate?
Always ambitious, Nadine would make an excellent prime minister one day. In fact, she could become Jamaica’s first expatriate prime minister (smile).
ST GEORGE’S
The St George’s College Old Boys’ Association recently held its annual Monsignor Gladstone Wilson Awards Banquet at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge.
The association’s executive includes President Lyndon Latore and Vice-president Ian Telfer, while its directors include Howard McIntosh, Raymond Pryce, Christopher Lue, and Ray Wong.
Gladstone Stanislaus Wilson, who delivered the homily at the reinterment of National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey in 1964, was considered the seventh most learned man in the world.
He could speak 14 different languages fluently, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The list of his accomplishments, which include four doctorates, would take up more than an entire page, even when abbreviated, summarised, and reduced to fine print.
A snippet includes: 19261931 Urban College Rome (Resident Scholar) B.A. Hons – Won the Latin, Greek, Natural History Awards and the Chancellor’s Philosophical Scholarship 1929, PhD summa cum laude 1930, Gold Medallist and Prizeman in Psychology, Moral Philosophy, and History of Philosophy, BD (Hons).
He was declared St George’s College Student of the 20th Century.
AWARDEES
This year’s awardees were Deacon Clive Chambers, Peter Chang, and Danny Ho Lung.
In his reply on behalf of his fellow awardees, Clive Chambers started with a quote of Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”
We (the three honourees) unanimously agreed to this great quote of Mother Teresa. We see it as a source of inspiration Dr Shane Alexis, PNP candidate for South Eastern St Mary, exchanges pleasantries with electoral staff at the nomination centre, St Theresa’s Catholic Church, St Mary, on October 9.
in our lives.
It is our hope that after tonight, we all could apply this simple but great statement of Mother Teresa’s to our lives so that we each may recognise that we don’t have to do great thing to achieve, but we can also do the small things, but do them well and with love. What drove us to serve? Unconditional love and the Jesuit and Catholic Christian influence which taught us to be selfless and to give back always, to put service above self - to do the best we can, while we can.
How long have we been serving? Forever and as long as we physically can.
Why are we still serving, what is the motive? It is simply to help to keep STGC great, to keep her flag flying high, beneath the tall cathedral’s shadow, and to make it a school
of choice for students from all walks of life.
That St George’s, the fairest meadow in the city of Kingston, will continue to be the place where boys are moulded into men, into total human beings, into men for all seasons.
What can we do to inspire more old boys to come forward?
We hope that by our own example of service and willingness to continue to serve, not for profit, not for fame, not for our glory, but for ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the Greater Glory of God and St George’s.
We hope that we can continue to inspire others, including Peter and Danny’s sons and my two sons, now old boys of this institution as well. What does STGC mean to us? It means everything to us, and we would do it all over again if we could.
We are honoured to have been the ones chosen out of many other possible candidates ....
and our heads have not become swollen. Rather, this award, named after this great man, Msgr Gladstone Wilson, has made us all humbler.
For when we look at his achievements, where he came from, and the dizzying heights that he attained, we are happy to accept this award with the hope that one day, soon and very soon, every single first-former entering St George’s College and, in fact, every Georgian, will have a booklet on his life and his achievements.
We are sure that if we asked how many of us here tonight knew of the exploits of this larger-than-life Jamaican diocesan priest and St George’s old boy, we probably would have less than 20 per cent answering in the positive.
So it is our hope that after tonight, a real effort will be made by the old boys, school, and church to have the life of this exemplary man documented so that every future set of first formers in every Catholic high school has the story of M.G.W. as mandatory reading for firstform, and the best place to begin this is at his alma mater, St George’s College.
Peter wants to dedicate this award to his father, Richard, ‘Dacca” Chang, of the class of 1948 for instilling in him Georgian virtues and way of life.
Danny wants to dedicate this award to his wife, Jo Jo, for supporting him, STGC, and Alpha and for putting up with the time he has dedicated to his alma mater.
I dedicate the award to my family, in general, for all the time I have spent doing things at STGC, and to my two sons, in particular, who didn’t want to go there, but eventually succumbed to my pressure. And I know they have no regrets now that they are both young old boys.
We want to thank our classmates of our two great classes (‘67 and ‘73) for all the work and dedication they have given to the school over the years. We also want to thank those who have personally responded positively to our request for support of this function.
Ask not what St George’s can do for you, but what you can do for St George’s and Jamaica to make it a better place.
Previous ‘winners’ of this award include Justice Ian Forte, Raymond Chang, Charles Williams, Neville Bell, Dr Aggrey Irons, Dr Louis Knight, Dr Fred Kennedy, Don Wehby, Paul Bitter, Pokar Chandiram, Ferdie Madden, Pancho Rankine, and Lascelles Williams.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam – For the greater glory of God.
I