My mother-in-law would have loved Bermuda
The Great Depression, a dream destroyer of the first order, counted among its myriad victims a young Windsor office worker who longed for a romantic honeymoon in beautiful Bermuda but had to settle for a bumpy but cheap train ride for two to Cleveland, of all places.
Catherine, my late motherin-law, never made it to her fantasy island. The dream of seeing Bermuda, the one and only item on her bucket list, died with her when her heart gave out in 1999, just days before the millennium she was so eager to witness.
This week, in a belated and forlorn attempt to set it right, my wife and I delivered a bit of Bermuda to Catherine’s grave at Heavenly Rest in South Windsor. The small plastic bag, filled with fine, white sand scooped from tranquil Grotto Bay on Bermuda’s north coast, must have made quite the initial impression when airport security scanned our luggage.
Still, we learned one thing from this too-brief expedition. Catherine was on the right track in wanting to see Bermuda. That tiny fishhook-shaped chain of limestone islands perched atop the dead rim of an ancient volcano far out in the Atlantic Ocean, more than a thousand kilometres off the coast of North Carolina, is something special.
We’ve visited our share of islands in search of sun, rum and fun. And liked them all, even the Dominican Republic. But this one? I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like in its tourism “heyday” of the 1950s and 1960s because it’s still a gem — a costly gem, mind you — in the eyes of a first-time visitor.
That’s not the impression you get from reading Bermuda newspapers or chatting with its erudite cabbies. According to them, the self-governing British colony, now in the midst of a heated national election, is going to hell in a hand-cart. Crime is up. Debt is up. Drug use is up. And unemployment is climbing in a tiny country (population 65,000 including thousands of foreign workers) with no employment insurance and little in the way of a social security net.
As Richard, bartender at Margarita Grill in the capital city of Hamilton explained, Bermuda assumed it could ride out any recession, thanks to its lucrative banking and insurance industries, but over the past couple of humbling years has learned it isn’t immune to brutal global downturns. Richard, by the way, told us he used to tour with jazz legend Lionel Hampton and knows Detroit and Windsor well. It’s that kind of island. The guy running the corner store in the historic town of St. George’s? He’s familiar with walleye (pickerel) fishing in Canada and wanted to know how the salmon fishing in Lake Ontario is holding up.
It’s different in Bermuda. The island chain, which boasts a higher standard of living than the U.S. but punishing retail prices since it imports 80 per cent of its food and most consumer goods, has a high literacy rate and a sophisticated, well-travelled population. But those at the bottom of the ladder chafe at the way jobs, especially in construction and the hotel sector, so often go to “non-Bermudians” while they struggle to make ends meet.
OK. There are problems in paradise. But if you’re looking for something more than a fenced all-inclusive resort where you can swill watereddown cocktails all day and avoid the locals, Bermuda might just be the answer.
For starters, it’s pure eye-candy in late September, with its hilly, winding roads draped in semi-tropical greenery and ablaze in pink, red and white hibiscus, a flower so abundant they use it as hedges. The transportation system, featuring pink buses and high-speed ferries, would put those of most Canadian cities to shame, and at $28 for a three-day transportation pass, it’s a hell of a deal.
Crime? Call me naive but I felt safer than I do on some streets in Windsor. The water? Drink it right from the tap. Litter? You’ll find more in Willistead Park on a weekend than in all 20 square miles of Bermuda. Begging or hawking trinkets? We saw none of that. Old-fashioned politeness and warmth? Like no other place I’ve been. Slums? No doubt there’s some bad housing but most of what we saw was attractive and pricey, with white stone roofs designed to collect rainwater and limestone walls painted in a riot of colours, from sea blue to avocado green.
If you have any interest in history, Bermuda is a mustsee. A major British naval base since the American Revolution, the “Gibraltar of the Atlantic” is laced with dozens of seemingly impregnable fortresses and a former Royal Navy dockyard that now features world- class museums and shops aimed at cruise ship passengers.
Catherine? Kay? I’m sorry we didn’t bring back some iconic pink sand. But believe me, you would have cherished this place.