Bahama Pundit

Bahamianizing the College of The Bahamas

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The decision of President Janyne Hodder to resign her post at the College of The Bahamas after a short tenure provides COB and the country with an opportunity to revisit core issues related to the institution’s evolution towards university status. 

The knee-jerk reaction by some that her departure will harm COB’s transition to university status is based on all sorts of faulty assumptions.  It assumes that Mrs. Hodder is the only person in the world who can lead this effort, and that there are no others who can so do.  Notoriously unscientific newspaper polls notwithstanding, Mrs. Hodder’s retirement is not Armageddon. 

President Hodder has a number of accomplishments and many are grateful for her service and wish her well in her future endeavours.  There are others who remain generally displeased with her presidency.  It is disingenuous to suggest that all of the criticisms concerning her tenure revolve around her not being a Bahamian. 

The Debate Over Clifton Heritage Park

Senator Dr. Jacinta Higgs, chairperson of the Clifton Heritage Authority, recently responded to Richard Coulson's article in the Tribune on December 12, titled Dilemma at Clifton Point.

The previous post on this site (by Simon) also responds to Mr Coulson's original article, which described the park as "one of those well-meaning but fuzzy ideas that without rational planning have a hard time surviving in our tough competitive world...Much of the park is 'under construction' like its website, whose 'News' section alertly displays a 2005 press release as its latest item."

According to Mr Coulson, "One doubts there was any careful planning about continuing expenses, particularly the big new budget items needed to make the park an attractive going concern. It was simply another project with a political agenda, backed by our well-intentioned but unrealistic culture mavens, including the do-gooder foreign organizations that give us advice but don’t understand Bahamian realities.

"To become viable, the park needs to have a publicity campaign (it’s not listed with tour operators) and  a vigorous membership drive to provide consistent donations. Since its activities overlap with the Bahamas National Trust, perhaps the best solution would be to merge with the Trust, whose energetic leadership and long list of loyal members might find a way to pay for the park’s aspirations and bring its dreams to reality."

In the following guest post, Mr Coulson (a Bahamian financial advisor who writes business articles for the Tribune), responds to both Dr Higgs and Simon, who he describes as "a young man who likes to sound off like a know-it-all but refuses to reveal his name."

Who Should Run Clifton Heritage National Park?

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

The debate over the best funding and administrative mechanisms for the Clifton Heritage National Park is not primarily about this national treasure. More broadly, the debate concerns the development and sustainability of heritage sites and institutions across our archipelago.

Clifton is a park of both archaeological and environmental significance, with the potential to become a major centre for historical and other educational programmes, as well as a place for recreation and heritage tourism.

While Clifton has some of the features of parks administered by the Bahamas National Trust (BNT) that is not its essential or exclusive feature, any more than Fort Charlotte and its environs is simply a “stroll in the park”.  There is a history resident in these ruins and built heritage sites.

A Tour of Grand Bahama

by Larry Smith

Standing on the shore at the eastern tip of Grand Bahama you can gaze across the bight at the super-exclusive cottages of Deepwater Cay, an iconic fishing lodge created in the 1950s by Gil Drake and A J McClean - the two Americans who first popularised the sport of bonefishing.

Just beyond is Sweeting's Cay, Grand Bahama's easternmost settlement. This whole area is a patchwork of mangroves, sandflats, creeks, and lagoons. It is not the most attractive part of the Bahamas, but I guess fly fishermen are more concerned with the hunt for what they call the 'grey ghost' than they are with picturesque seascapes.

In fact, nearby McLeans Town (which was laid out in 1835 for freed slaves by an official named Donald McLean) owes its existence to this complicated marine environment. Before the construction of Freeport, this area had the only sheltered harbour on Grand Bahama. And today, this is where the ferries are based that make the 45-minute trip to Crown Haven on Abaco.

Bahamian Leaders Support Action on Climate Change at Copenhagen—For Good Reasons

by Larry Smith

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and Environment Minister Earl Deveaux fly to Denmark next week for a landmark world conference aimed at tackling what some have called "the most complex collective challenge humanity has ever confronted."

It's not about the war on terror or the global recession. The challenge is to prevent catastrophic climate change by "de-carbonising" economic growth. In other words, cutting our almost total reliance on the burning of fossil fuels (oil gas and coal), which is pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an alarming rate.

There are significant - yet manageable - costs involved in this effort. But the good thing about action to address climate change is that it presents unprecedented opportunities for the world in terms of energy security, pollution control, technology innovation and sustainable development.

Ingraham and Deveaux will join more than 100 government leaders (including US President Barack Obama) and more than 15,000 other attendees from around the world at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen, which got underway this past weekend and closes on December18. Their goal is to strike a major political deal that will control the world's carbon emissions for the next decade.

Three Books—Pieces of Eight, Conch Pearls and the Walk of a Bahamian Doctor

by Larry Smith

Three interesting books landed on my desk this past week—two recently published, the other a reprint that is also available online as a free download.

Pieces of Eight was familiar to many Bahamians in the first half of the 20th century. It was written by Richard Le Gallienne - an English "man of letters" who died in 1947 at the age of 80. A minor romantic writer who lived in London, New York and Paris, Le Gallienne dabbled in journalism and publishing.

Published in 1918, Pieces of Eight is a work of fiction that purports to be "the authentic narrative of a treasure discovered in the Bahama Islands in 1903." According to one early reviewer, it is "A polite treasure hunt which, compared to R L Stevenson's handling of the same plot lacks the thrills of real buccaneering, but which is romantic and beautifully descriptive of the tropic Bahamas."

The book became a hot political issue under the old UBP regime (when it was a prescribed schooltext) for its generally disdainful references to black Bahamians and use of racially insulting language. However, it features some interesting descriptions of contemporary Bahamian life, and is perhaps best known today for one of the earliest references to that great Bahamian folk song, the John B Sails.

Actually, Le Gallienne made an even earlier reference to this famous song in an article he wrote for Harper's Magazine in 1916. This was an account of a visit to the Bahamas when he spent a week on a schooner sailing from Nassau to the Exuma Cays and Harbour Island - his journalistic cruise leading to production of the romantic novel.