No News

 

                                            Since I have no news, here are 2 recent paintings.

Check out Anthony's website at finescaletech.ca and Nick's at greenstonelandscapes.ca

How Caribbeans Measure Time and Other Phrases

 These do represent actual, measurable time

Just Now- immediately or later, or wait a minute

    I goin' jus' now to cum back - I'm leaving now, and I'll be back right away. 

Soon Come - I am just around the corner or on my way - (actually haven't left yet)

The Other Day - could be last week or 50 years ago

Come Awhile - come here right now

Draf - draft.  They seem to be sensitive to every little breeze that wafts by and blame every ailment on the 'draf'. "A draf catch me"

Kahlik - colic, or upset digestive system

Bad Spirit or Mashed-up - feeling down, stressed, depressed

Konsumshun -  a bad cough

Maga -  thin or skinny

Mashed Up - broken

    It's all in the voice inflexion and raised eyebrows

See November 6, 2023 - Post: You Know You're Dominican If You..

 Pre Christmas Update

We are closing out 2025, year of the Snake symbolizing shedding and looking forward to the year of the Horse, symbolizing moving forward.

To simplify the long and complicated stories:

RE: the Guillet property – there was a possible fraud by the neighbour who was encroaching on McDowell’s family land. This clitch is holding up the survey needed for the title to be registered in McDowell's name.  We are waiting for the surveyor and the researcher at the Registry Office to make their reports.   The lawyer cannot go ahead without these documents.  Probably after the Christmas break.  This little piece of land has been in his mother’s family for generations. In those days nobody had surveys, titles or registration; everything was considered ‘family land’.  Most of that family is either far-flung, old, sick or dead, but he can prove the line. The lot is bounded by the Manicou River and the Pennville Road.

RE: the Bay Street property where we have the house and Bar – the urgent pressure is off. We do have to move, but it turns out that McDowell is the executor of Miss Gwenny’s will, and as such the ‘other side’ can claim the property because they were named in Miss Marion’s will.  However,  until McDowell’s side is heard, the Court cannot rule when, if, or circumstances.  Miss Marion’s will gives the property to them and their heirs, as well as lifetime occupancy to her niece Gwendolyn. Miss Gwenny bequeathed the property to McDowell, although she did not ‘own’ the land.  It was not hers to give.  He will not benefit from any sale, and he will lose the little $300 Canadian rent he gets from the convenience shop on the other side.  Nothing will happen now.  Everyone is on Christmas holiday.  It can take years. Meanwhile we are here.

RE: the Land at Destinee (farm/garden/Zion).  The eastern boundary is causing some problems.  The neighbour is encroaching, i.e. planting on Magloire boundary line.  At long last, we have found one of the rare honest, licensed surveyors in Dominica.  That boundary needs to be redone and reestablished, and will be.

RE: the fond (valley)and acers at Champs Elysee are OK; fallow because there needs to be a feeder road established there to bring out any produce.

RE: Mont Morson acres - for sale

 

This is our thought: to build a little house at Guillet, and to open a small, more upscale Bar/restaurant/ live music venue, at Vance’s property on Bay Street, which has a big back yard and a room for a souvenir/gift shop/art gallery.  Waiting for Vance’s appeal on this, his building, to be finalised so we can make this move. 

AUGUST -2025

So I am home, i.e., in Portsmouth, with my McDowell, in my little old, very dirty, now clean house.  I spent 6 weeks in Brooke Valley, with Anthony, Nick and Samantha and my brother. Peter.  A "BIG UP" to Samantha. I saw the people I wanted to see, did what I went to do, and learned that I couldn't handle the technology.  My phone and the internet became a mystery.  Samantha easily handled it all for me and willingly drove me around.  I made a new friend in Sandra (Peter's lady). I was cold the whole time while everyone else complained about how hot it was!  I did enjoy the little dogs, Savvy and Rocky, the professionalism of the tradesmen and that nothing was rusty or corroded. Perth seemed gentrified. I hadn't been there for two and a half years.

We spent a good deal of time discussing renovations and remodelling. During my time there, I went up and down memory lane a lot (sadly) as I sorted, packed, stored, gave away, and threw out much of my 50 years, raising my children and career there, as well as my own childhood memorabilia. 

The trip home was easy, again thanks to Samantha.  It was easy, but the plane from Ottawa to Newark left half an hour late. I would not make the connection to Dominica as I knew I had to change terminals, which meant a bus/train to the international terminal. Luckily, I had booked a wheelchair which met me at Newark and took me directly to my flight. A good half an hour walk. I would never have made it without the assistance. She even took me to my seat on the plane. The Ottawa agent should get a mention, too. She went out of her way, was kind, understanding and helpful. Fly United Air! 

Boarding the plane to Dominica was startling.  It was filled with Caribbean people, and you could sense it.  Vibrant, colourful, and noisy. 

So here I am ....now what?????  Stay tuned 

Here's what I came back to:

The plants were alive and in good enough shape.  The garden had gone wild and was horribly overgrown. All the habanero, scotch bonnet and bird's eye cayenne peppers were bushy and loaded, the sorrel died, and the anise had gone to seed. My little pomegranate tree is now knee high, the sugar apple and guava are over my head, and I think the cashima will survive. The house was very dirty and dusty.  Dominica had had a week of heavy Sahara dust storms, so there was grit and sand everywhere, in every corner of every cupboard. In my absence, McDowell did his best, but couldn't keep up with it.  It took me a full week to bring it all under some sort of control.  The garden is weeded and the kitchen is clean. I feel I can relax a little.

It is very hot.  Thankfully, Tropical Storm Erin veered north and hit the Virgin Islands, but the sea is high, and the bay is full of cargo ships bobbing up and down at anchor.  All the fishing boats are on shore, all the sailboats are gone.  The pounding waves are undermining the beaches.

We have 3 months before we have to move. We don't know where to, but there are several very good prospects.  I am not worried.

🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴                                                                                   🌞

 ANOTHER UPDATE

For those interested......

McDowell has decided not to sign the document, which states that we have agreed to vacate by December 31, 2025.  We have a place to move the Bar to and live, but it needs to be cleaned up, and major repairs are required, which we will undertake in exchange for rent.  This is under appeal, too, so both places are awaiting the court's decision on the various appeals.

I have a brand-new passport, and I am looking forward to buying a ticket home.  I am aiming for not later than the week of August 11.  We will live in our house and do business from our Bar/Restaurant until we have to go.  I will cope with losing the garden and the sea.

Otherwise, I am OK, and packing up the Brooke Valley house.  Hard physical work, but mostly heartbreaking.  So sad.  50 years of memories, mementoes, things, photos and beautiful, beloved books that nobody wants.  The house needs attention, the roof needs repairs and the fascia must be replaced.  Nick and I are trying to decide whether to remove the additions which will not survive another long, wet winter and are too much space to heat and not needed anyway.

It seems as though I will be packing for the next 6 months.

 

May 26, 2025

Written after the hearing on May 19. 2025

The way that the case was presented is not the way it happened.

Miss Gwenny and I might have done wrong by spending all we ever earned on a property that didn’t belong to either of us.  But should we end up with nothing after all these years? Should I end up with a debt?  She only wanted to show her gratitude to her friend and caregiver.  She was a mentor for me.  I followed her instructions; she gave me her Power of Attorney.  Her aunt brought her back into her will by saying she should get a quarter of any sale or lease of the property.

The law says that Miss Gwenny could not give what she didn’t own. She thought that since Miss Marion’s will gave her guaranteed lifetime tenancy and called her the “legal owner” she could make her own will. She knew no other way to secure anything.  Mr. Clitus Angol, the Justice of the Peace and Mr. George Royer, respected senior citizens of Portsmouth, were both witnesses to her will.  Could they have stopped this tragedy?

The chain of executors has been established.  Ownership of the property has been established.  The beneficiaries of Miss Marion’s will were all dead at the time Miss Gwenny wrote her will.  She alone was left standing.

There is nothing of Miss Marion’s, Miss Kitzia or Miss Gwenny’s in the house.  There is no furniture, no objects, no glassware, no keepsake, no books, or religious pieces.  Everything has been destroyed over the years by various hurricanes, earthquakes and finally Hurricane Maria. Not even the house was standing in liveable condition. Miss Marion had died in 1988, Miss Kitzia, months after in 1999. Miss Gwenny had to sell her grandmother’s Meb bed to bury Miss Kitzia.  Ma Dewhurst bought the bed. 

It is not a true statement to say that I did nothing after I received Mr. Alick Lawertence’s letter. I took the letter to Miss Gwenny’s lawyer. Para Riviere.  After his death the situation was moved to Noreen John, who was still with Legal Aid, then Hurricane Maria came, and so I continued with her at her private office. She was communicating with Michael Bruney looking for a solution.  After Noreen John died nothing at all was ever heard from them until the Bailiff, as a surprise, came from Dawn Yearwood’s office.

I am at the Court’s mercy.   I am about to be on the street with no where to go or live.  I didn’t know what was written, or how the law was interrupted.  I didn’t force Miss Gwenny to do anything.  What she did was from her good heart.  May she rest in peace.

I wonder how Miss Gwenny and her aunt are getting along in heaven? Miss Marion, Miss Kitzia and Miss Gwenny are looking at this confusion from heaven with dismay. May their souls rest in peace.

McDowell Magloire

McDOWELL'S STORY

A follow-up to the May 19 Court date

This is McDowell's account of how he ended up here.

The people who are challenging him are portraying him as hostile and nefarious.  That is not how it happened. Both he and Miss Gwenny are without guile. 

He has accepted that he has lost ownership of the house, the concrete building and the land, and is not contesting this point. The lawyers have told us from the beginning that Miss Gwenny did not own the property, and so, however much she wanted to give McDowell something, she could not give what was not hers to give.  Miss Marion's will gave her a lifetime tenancy only,  not ownership. It is now confirmed.  Now, the question is their demand for him to pay "damages and costs".  We are asking for compensation for the renovations and rebuilding of the buildings and property since Hurricane Maria.

NOTE: The house and land were bought by Miss Marion.  Miss Gwenny, Miss Marion's niece, came to live with her aunt when she was 5 years old.  Miss Kitzia, Marion's sister, was also part of the household.  McDowell lived with his mother and siblings just down the street.  He was a school child when he started to work for the Peter ladies, Marion, Kitzia and Gwendolyn, and was with them all his life.  Miss Marion called him "Our man in the yard". Miss Gwenny called him "My adopted son".

McDowell -

One day, during my early childhood days in Portsmouth, as I was running along Bay Street on my way to the Portsmouth Pier, or dock, Miss Marion, who was standing on her porch, called me.  I sat down with her at her dining room table.  She wrote down the names of many men from the upper Zikack area.  She asked me if I knew these men.  I told her no, but she set me off anyway, with a bunch of newspapers, called The Star, to find these people. Miss Alfree was the editor of the newspaper. The newspaper was 25 cents at the time. I was paid 2 cents for each one I sold and delivered weekly. Many people helped me along the way. This continued for months. 

I don’t really remember how many years I spent delivering papers, or polishing the floors, or picking knips and doing messages under Miss Marion’s direction, for the family. One day, she handed me a straw lunch basket and told me to deliver it to Miss Gwenny who was working further down Bay Street, about 3 blocks away.  This became a regular thing. I also met the other aunt, Miss Kitzia, who was not of sound mind.

 Miss Gwenny was a ship agent and owned a small craft shop on her own property. During the time I was assisting the Peters ladies, Miss Gwenny introduced me to her brother, Mr. Wills Kelsick. She bought agricultural produce from him to be shipped to Antigua to a hotel.  I prepared the produce for shipping for Miss Gwenny.  One evening, as I was coming home from Long House after shipping his produce, Mr. Kelsick called me into the Douglas Snackette.  He said to his new wife, “He’s the one.” Then to me he said, “Don’t think Gwenny can leave you anything because she is only there until she dies.”  I didn’t understand this, so I brought the remark to Miss Gwenny’s attention.

After Hurricane David, (August 25, 1979) things changed. I found a job on a boat coming and going. These I call my sailing days. 

When I was back home in Portsmouth and settled, about 1990, I learned of the death of both aunts, Marion and Kitzia (Marion, 1988, Kitzia, 1989) and of the struggle Gwenny had to rebuild the old wooden house in the yard next to the main house. It brought back old memories because it was a house that was used as a shop.  That’s where I bought my Christmas supplies as a child.  It was one of our most exciting Christmas shops in Portsmouth. Miss Gwenny told me they broke it down and built another little storeroom with the excess material salvaged from the old building, and how she had to sell her property on Bay Street to build the concrete building.  She wanted to be closer to her ailing and aged aunts.  When I arrived, Miss Gwenny had a new craft shop on the side of the new, concrete building closest to the house and rented out the other side.

By this time, Miss Gwenny was partially blind.  She struggled with this blindness until the end of her days, dying at 102 (2012) having come to live there from the time she was 5 years old. During this time, the late 90s, she developed a problem with her tenant (Roger Brewster) who was not paying his rent. This rent was her only income to support herself and the improvements to the family home. The matter was put in the courts by her and her brother

At that time, I was working with my sister in rented premises on Harbour Lane Street. After Gwenny won her case against Brewster she said to me, “The place ready, do you want it?” I took it. She rented that spot to me at $400 a month. This is where I presently have my business, The Sagittarius 2 Reggae Bar and Grill. This enterprise is registered as La Cour Heritage.

In 1995 I had to go to St Martin with my pregnant girlfriend and stayed a couple of months, then returned to Portsmouth.  In the later part of 1995 I had to return to St Martin to pick her up. I paid Miss Gwenny for 4 months' advance rent.  Then 2 Hurricanes, Luis and Marilyn, category 4 hit St Martin back-to-back. I was in St. Martin. A helicopter came from Guadeloupe to St Martin and picked up all the pregnant women and took them to Guadeloupe.  I returned to Portsmouth to get a visa for Guadeloupe.  The baby was born in Guadeloupe, September 15, 1995. We 3 (me, mother and baby) came back to Portsmouth.  I reopened my business.

Miss Gwenny and I had to repair the entire backyard and the seawall, which were severely undermined by the 2 hurricanes,

November 1, 2004: We had a major Richter scale 6 earthquake. Miss Gwenny and I were in the house when it started to shake.  Gwenny hung onto the kitchen counter and called out to me, “Hold me, hold me “, while the house was swaying.  Then she shouted, “Mother Mary! Help us!”   The earthquake brought down the steeple in the Catholic Church, the Methodist church in Portsmouth and the church in Ville Case. It also brought down the 50-foot-long, 12-foot-high, L shaped, stone wall between the house and the big drain on Boroughs Square. We paid men to clean up the fallen wall. We are still picking up stones from this wall.

 The Bar was not operating well, so Miss Gwenny gave me notice and rented it to someone else and the other side to Justina De Roche for a mini mart. They are still there. I continued to live in the family house as Miss Gwenny’s caretaker.

During early 2007 I ran into financial difficulties and decided to go to St. Marten.  I ended up paying my debt and returned to Dominica 2 years later (2009) to my sick mother, who died while I was on the way home to her, only to find that Miss Gwenny was in greater problems with the tenant who was now occupying my former space. It was then that she appointed me her Power of Attorney so I could go to court on her behalf.  With this and her lawyer I was able to solve the problem on her behalf. Then I started my business again. She called me her adopted son.

Gwenny struggled to make ends meet until her death in 2012.   I was looking after Miss Gwenny and living in the house as a family member.

I heard a conversation between Mr. Kelsick and Miss Gwenny where she told him that she must leave something for McDowell.  He answered that “You can’t give something that is not yours.” She said, “It is my house, and I can do what I want.  I will make a will”.  It was then that she made her will. 2004.  This will was lost in Hurricane Maria.

Miss Gwenny and I continued to uplift the estate.  She wrote her second will in 2010. After discussion and negotiation failed, I was asked to go call the Justice of the Peace, and Mr. Morris Thomas as witnesses for Miss Gwenny when her lawyer, Para Riviere, had finished the document and it was ready to be signed.

A point I want to make is that Miss Gwenny didn’t do this on her own.  She made her will with a lawyer.  She asked me to get the lawyer to come to her so she could make a will.   She gave her aunt’s will to him for the information in it. At this meeting I heard her lawyer tell her that she could sell.  So that gave her the confidence to make her will as she did. After he made her will, I was sent to call the Justice of the Peace, Mr. Angol at the time and another good friend of the family to witness it.  After she received the will and it was signed, she told me to take it to the registry to be registered. When I went to the registry, they told me the will cannot be registered until her death and to keep it in a safe place.  After her death I registered it. I don’t know if she got wrong advice.

The only other person I knew of who was close to Miss Gwenny, beside Mr. Kelsick, was Angela Dewhurst and her husband, Peter.  It was not until near the end of Miss Gwenny’s days that I saw any other members of her family.  A young lady and her husband passed on a Sunday, quickly visited, and she left me her phone number.  I called this number the morning of her death.

The night before the burial, while I was working in the Bar, Merlin Kelsick and Pet Savarin came and asked me for the keys to the house because they wanted to enter the house, which was my home.   Previously, I had been instructed by Miss Gwenny, “Don’t give anybody the keys after I die and the funeral home has my body.”  I closed the Bar and came with them to the house. I opened the door, turned on the lights and let them in.  Mr. Kelsick looked around and started asking me questions about the house such as,  “Are there any leaks in the roof?” and he was moving around like he had already taken over.

The next day after the burial some family members walked into the house and started walking through the house and the yard like they were already the owners. Some of them I only saw for the first time.  I followed them into the yard.  When we came back inside, Merlin Kelsick said to me, “I will send you a letter and the tenants because I am the executor of Gwenny’s estate.”  So, I said, “you say that you are the executor of her estate, but I am the executor of her last will and testament. Then he jumped on his crew and said,” You guys never told me that, and there is nothing I can do until I see this document”.  Then I said, Tomorrow I will get the justice of the peace to read her will to you.” Merlin Kelsick answered “NO NO we need an official copy,” My answer was that I would get it from the lawyer tomorrow and you can pick it up.  They came and they picked it up. His comment was, “Oh she left you everything….” And he said more. A few weeks later I received the letter from Alec Lawrence at the post office which I brought to Miss Peter’s lawyer. 

There is no hostility on my part, and I have never met June Kelsick.  I do not know this person so I couldn’t be hostile.  Sometimes at night I see people I don’t know hanging around, so I ask if they are a spy or what they are doing there.  This is not hostility.  This is protecting the property.

 It has been my home for the last 33 years. I also have a registered business on the property.  After Maria I took loans to reroofed, renovate, rebuild, reside, and make it liveable again.  I am still paying these loans at the Credit Union and Rudolph Thomas Hardware. In other words, I didn’t make it worse, I made it better.  It is one of the old century houses on Dominica.

From what I know about Miss Gwenny, she was not a bad person.  Whatever she did wrong wasn't willful.  Like me, I thought I was safe under what she was doing, that’s the true respect I had for the woman and her struggle.  I don’t know if she thought her aunt had brought her into the picture when she promised a quarter of the sale or lease to her, or if she did not understand what Gwenny’s position was. I’m in the middle of what is a mystery to me.   

 Miss Gwenny wanted to give me something she had worked all her life for, it just happened to be this land compound.  Everything she had has gone into this property.  Gwenny told Will Kelsick, Marion’s executor, that she wanted to give me something. He did not want to negotiate with her. She wasn’t left with a choice because everything she legally owned in her lifetime was put into this property. I think the executor could have worked something out with her because they were both beneficiaries included in the future lease or sale of the property. Maybe she thought, as a legal lifetime owner, she could do what she wanted, and she had a lawyer’s advice.

I am willing to answer any questions