Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt.
St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 25 of April 2020 No. 964
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Dear Friends,
Arthur Knaggs was at MSB 1945/46. That was a long time ago.
Even for me since my time was 1955 to 1960.
But I recall it as a pleasant journey, with the
necessary ups and downs.
---------------------------------------------.
From: idmitch@anguillanet.com
Sent: Tuesday,
21 April 2020 17:18
Subject: Arthur
Knaggs at MSB 1945/46
Hello, Brian,
Many thanks for this memoire of
yours.
You won’t find this easy to
understand, but we are more likely to hear from members of your generation at
Mount than those of the late1960s, the 1970s, and the1980s.
They don’t seem to have been
taught to write essays like we were.
The very best to you and yours,
and here’s hoping you all keep safe during the pandemic.
Don
-----------------------------------------------------.
From: Brian Gonsalves
<brian.gonsalves36@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday,
21 April 2020 13:04
Oops ... apologies my initial
emails were sent to incorrect e-addresses –
I hope these copies get through
to you
Best
Brian,
-----
Forwarded message --------------------------------------
From:
Brian Gonsalves <brian.gonsalves36@yahoo.com>
Sent:
Tuesday, 21 April 2020, 16:50:53 BST
Dear Ladislao (and Don),
Even though I only met Arthur
Knaggs fleetingly 75 years ago, I was saddened to hear that he had died and I
would like to send my sincere condolences and sympathy (via your renowned
bulletin) to all his family and many friends.
Nigel Boos' email to Mrs Sue
Knaggs was a most courteous and fitting tribute to Arthur, who was one of the
senior "giants" at the Abbey School, when a group of very young
"Boys from B G" (now - Guyana) arrived at MSB in 1945.
Most of us remained at MSB for
just over a year, before departing in 1946 to finish our schooling in the UK.
Now, as an ancient 84-year-old
ex-Mount Boy (with a fading memory for everyday matters) I still retain clear,
concise and vivid recollections of incidents that transpired at MSB (75 years
ago) which leads me back to Arthur Knaggs, with his youthful fascination for
all forms of wildlife.
I remember Arthur being involved
in capturing a large snake from the forest behind MSB, and bringing it back to
the School to show it to a gathering of astonished boys.
Fr Ildefons was there, and I
assume that he must have allowed Arthur to release the snake on the stone
terrace, at the side of the main School building, where it slithered around for
some time.
Eventually Fr Ildefons instructed
Arthur to collect the snake (in a sack) and (presumably) return it back to the
wild?
It would be a bonus if any
(ancient) Old Mount Boy, circa 1945, might be able to substantiate this snake
event?
I realise that there are not too
many Old Boys from the '45 era still around (only 3 of the original "Boys
from B G" - Clive B-G in Spain, Johnny Willems in Guyana and myself in
Oxfordshire, UK) are still standing - BUT "hope springs
eternal" that someone, somehow and somewhere may recollect what was a
truly unusual incident ...
Finally, on behalf of the old
"Boys from B G", I would like to pay a special tribute for the loving
support and generous hospitality that we received from Mrs & Mrs A Farfan,
who sent two of their sons (John & David) to MSB in 1945.
Mr Ainsley Farfan was a good
friend of my father (both Horse Racing fans) and his wife and himself virtually
adopted the B G boys and sheltered us from the all the forlorn rigours of being
away from home.
Mrs Farfan was a very beautiful
and gracious lady, who was largely instrumental in persuading Fr Bernard to
allow us to have numerous 'exeats' away from MSB, over weekends, to be
thoroughly spoilt and entertained (as indicated in the old prints attached to
my email)..
Take care, best regards and good
health to all in these medically dangerous (C/Virus) times,
Brian Gonsalves
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A REVIEW
Mariel Brown’s film ‘Unfinished Sentences’ was begun as a
documentary about her father, the late Wayne Brown, one of Trinidad’s most
influential newspaper writers, a public figure and a fitting subject for
biography in any form.
As the film develops, though, its focus changes
before the eyes of the viewer. A documentary somehow becomes a memoir and a
purportedly subjective portrait of a writer actually becomes a deeply personal
map of a film-maker’s uneasy voyage into the creative mind of her greatest
artistic influence, and out of the mental doldrums in which her father’s death
had left her
Unfinished Sentences, then, turns out to be a
prescient working title and perfect final one. The film the director started is
never properly finished; and the one she finishes was never properly started.
In that sense, the film is, undoubtedly, structurally flawed. But not fatally;
indeed, the thing that might conceivably break it – the welding together of two
disparate elements – is the thing that makes it.
Brown’s courageous decision to pursue the true creative
path of her project delivers, in the end, the film’s knockout punch: the child
in the opening frames who elevates her father to immortal status is, by the
credits, the woman who can see her father’s faults, reveal some of her own,
forgive him for being human, and move on in her own professional life by making
a personal film.
The emotional honesty involved is almost
unnerving. Brown reveals her father’s failings as a parent and her family
relationships with an openness that might be thought of as naïve, if she did
not herself have the final cut. Pass or fail, this was all deliberate. Wayne
Brown’s reaction to Mariel Brown’s cutting her hair short, for instance, lays
bare the child, and the man, in a way that is almost too raw – but the viewer
sees that both deserve sympathy.
If Unfinished Sentences is really two separate
films, both clearly deserved to be made. If they are one, they are joined in an
almost umbilical way: It is hard to say whether the two parts are glued
together by Wayne Brown’s poetry or his daughter’s own craft.
The greatest strength of the film may not be
emotional at all, but technical: the unfinished first film is connected to the
un-begun second one by robust film-making know-how – this might be the
best-edited film ever shot in Trinidad. The script of Unfinished Sentences must
have been rewritten over and over, until it could fit footage already shot and
lead, from a start to which it was not fundamentally connected, to the end to
which the film-maker was pulled by her muse.
Again, because so little video of Wayne Brown
exists, the film-maker pads out her limited family home movies with dramatic
recreations, using actors, to underwrite the films visuals. This normally
cheesy device is made to work so very well that the scenes involving Wayne
Brown’s first wife make the viewer think, initially, that the young Megan
Hopkyns-Rees bore an uncanny resemblance to today’s Sophie Wight (the real-life
actor who plays her).
There are, admittedly, chinks in this armour:
if you stage a seaside scene supposedly set in Jamaica, you ought not to let
your viewers recognise Maracas Beach so readily.
Apart from that one clunky scene, the
cinematography, by Sean Edghill and Nadia Huggins, ranges from highly competent
to outstanding. The film’s strongest visual moment – the freeze-frame in the
water of the young Wayne Brown with his daughters that makes the viewer gasp –
is achieved by sleight-of-frame: the scene does not really include any Browns
at all, but the young actors (Reynaldo Frederick, Che and Alessandra Jardine)
playing them.
The technical strengths show in the audio, too,
from the sublime (Francesco Emmanuel’s acoustic guitar) to the ridiculously
hard to endure (the director’s ear-splitting tinnitus).
In the end, Unfinished Sentences, does not just
survive, but surmounts, its syntactic unease. A film that sets out to show the
place her father held in the Caribbean world of letters ends by revealing the
place he held in his daughter’s world – and, en passant, the relationship
between creator and receptor of art. My old friend Wayne Brown, were he alive
today, would have given this film a glowing review; and would have been most
pleased at the truths it revealed, even – especially – about him.
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I think I can correctly name them
all, especially the guy in the back row second from the left standing between
L. Alves and G. Anderson. What do you think David? Nice shot, likely 1960 From
One.
I hate to admit it but you are right.
I can recognize my brother Bohdan
ALEXANDER Lew, standing 9th from the left.
yes that's him.
Leon Alves lived in Fort Lauderdale
for a few years.
We hang out whenever he came to
Orlando and i visited him a few times.
In fact i spoke to his nephew this
morning who is a very close friend of mine.
left around 61/62, ... top class
junior goalkeeper for St. Anthony - very stylish.
Leon like Peter Laughlin wants
nothing to do with the alumni..
I have no idea why, Peter was my swim
coach for years and when I called him in Florida, he pretended not to remember
me.
don't lose sleep; the bell curve is
always in play.
I likes Myron...he is the opposite to
me...I was a trouble maker.
Familiar faces.
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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or
any old boy that you would like to include.
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Photos:
19LK2685FBGRADOG,
Gregory Ragoonanan
14LK3789FBBPIFAM,
B.C. Pires
19LK7577FBNCA,
Natividad Cabello
65LK5528FBTFEGRP,
Terrence Ferreira and group
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