Nygard Takes Bahamas Back: The History of Clifton

by Larry Smith

Over the past several months, flamboyant 68-year-old Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard has released one outrageous video after another - all seemingly calculated to make fools out of Bahamians.

Perhaps the most egregious is an eight-minute celebration of Perry Christie's election last year, inappropriately titled Nygard Takes Bahamas Back. All of the videos - and Nygard's other public antics and comments - revolve around the land at the western end of New Providence, which has a fascinating history.

Nygard acquired Simm's Point - at the western tip of Lyford Cay - in 1984 - renaming it Nygard Cay. He built a fanciful palace there, which he describes as "the eighth wonder of the world". It was rented out at $42,000 per night until a fire in 2009. Since then Nygard has been seeking to rebuild his pleasure dome on an even grander scale - a prospect dreaded by other residents of the sedate Lyford Cay community.

"I am a Bahamian citizen and this is my country. I love Bahamian black people," Nygard declares condescendingly in one video, complaining about a supposed 10-year-long campaign to evict him from Lyford Cay. "I've been victimised and made very uncomfortable," he says. "Then my lifelong dream went up in smoke. I was not allowed to rebuild by the (previous) government."

According to Nygard, the only thing standing in the way of this "noble cause" is his Lyford Cay neighbour - the evil billionaire and environmentalist Louis Bacon. "He formed the Save the Bays group which is aimed at me," Nygard claims. "Well-meaning people joined in, but it is really a disguise to attack me."

The reference is to a recently formed public interest group called the Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay (or Save the Bays for short), whose website says is "committed to preserving and protecting Clifton Bay and other common marine environments surrounding New Providence." It is common knowledge that Bacon is one of the group's major backers.

And in the late 1990s, Bacon was one of several Lyford Cay financiers who supported an unprecedented fight to halt the development of a 600-acre high-density gated community along Clifton Bay. It was clearly a 'not-in-my-backyard' initiative, but Bacon and others did try unsuccessfully to buy the Clifton property (from the Oakes estate) in order to create a national park along the coast.

This issue became one of the major fault lines in the 2002 general election, which brought Perry Christie into office for the first time.

During the election campaign, Christie and the PLP formed an alliance with civic groups and environmentalists to oppose the $400 million Clifton Cay development - probably the only time Bahamians have ever come together to stop a major investment. After the election the Christie government established the 200-acre Clifton Heritage Park, which opened in 2009.

Now - years later - Clifton and its heritage have become something of a meat-covered bone that is being hotly contested by two pit bulls - Louis Bacon, who backs Save the Bays, and Peter Nygard, who is presumably behind a competing group called Saving Clifton Heritage Again.

Saving Clifton Again is ostensibly the brainchild of former PLP politico Koed Smith, who was a prominent participant in the original 2002 Clifton campaign. More recently he has been a lawyer and spokesman for Nygard.

In a hilariously melodramatic Star Wars-type video on his group's Facebook page, Smith says he is waging a war against "antagonistic foreign forces" who are trying to take "that which is ours...They have always wanted to keep us out of Clifton and the surrounding bay area. Clfton is ours - don't mess with it."

The screen then fades from a passionately indignant Koed Smith to the legendary stone steps carved into the limestone cliffs near the Heritage Park which (according to park signage) served as "a gateway between Clifton and the rest of the world…across them passed the first slaves from Africa, and the last cotton exported to Europe.”

In another video Vivien Whylly, who claims to be a direct descendent of Clifton slaves, refers to the steps as "the path our ancestors took into slavery." And there are many online references to the pirate steps, or more recently in the Tribune, to Blackbeard's steps. There are also romantic references to "an ocean bath carved from living rock, where slaves were washed following transport through the Middle Passage."

The reality is that Clifton is the most documented property in the Bahamas over the past 200 years, so we really don't need to make things up. The paper trail begins in the 1780s, when all of the land on the western end of New Providence was granted to loyalist refugees from America. These men were forced to emigrate to British territories like Canada or the Bahamas, where they received compensation for their losses in the American Revolution. 

Three Georgia merchants - Lewis Johnston, John Wood and Thomas Ross - received 791 acres near Clifton Point, which later formed the bulk of the Clifton Plantation (also known as the Whylly Plantation and more recently as Clifton Cay). 

 Another 448 acres was given to a South Carolina sea captain named William Lyford Jr. Some of this land eventually became part of Clifton and some was developed in the 1960s by a Canadian investor named E P Taylor as the exclusive Lyford Cay community.

Unfortunately for the romanticists, there was no 'Middle Passage' transport of Africans across the Atlantic to Clifton. As the late Paul Adderley explained in a 2000 interview, "these (loyalists) who came here from what is now the United States brought their slaves with them."

Even more to the point, the stone steps had nothing to do with either slaves or pirates. According to the 1924 Tribune Handbook the "narrow stairway was cut into the cliff by the Williamson Moving Picture Company" to access what was then known as the Jane Gale Cave. Gale acted in the 1916 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, shot using the newly-perfected Williamson Photosphere, a nine-foot-long underwater tube with a diving bell at one end.

The photosphere was developed by John Ernest Williamson, who pioneered underwater photography in the early years of the 20th century. He lived and filmed in Nassau for much of his life and died in 1966. His daughter, Sylvia Munro (now in her 80s), ran a pre-school here for many years and starred as a child in two of her father's films. Presumably, this history is not romantic enough for the Clifton Heritage Authority.

The photosphere is stored at a Munro family site off Lightbourn Lane. The remains of the iron tube, which connected the photosphere to the surface, are at the Antiquities Monuments and Museums Corporation on Collins Avenue. Both await the inauguration of a national museum - something we have been unable to achieve in 40 years of independence.

But let's return to the Clifton saga. Slaves worked the plantation until emancipation in the 1830s, after which there was sporadic farming on the land until it was acquired by Florida real estate developers in the 1920s. Their plans to develop a new town and resort community fell through and the entire area was bought by Sir Harry Oakes in 1935.

Fast forward to 1989, when the Pindling government decided to move the Nassau container port to Clifton. Some 200 acres were compulsorily acquired from the Oakes Estate for this purpose, but experts said the environmental costs of developing a port in this area were too great, so the Inter American Development Bank refused to provide financing.

So the 200 acres were simply forgotten about - until they became part of the 600-acre tract of private land at Clifton that investors proposed to make into another Lyford Cay-type gated community in the 1990s.

By all accounts Nygard had nothing to do with the campaign to derail this development and create a national park at Clifton a dozen years ago. But recently he has wrapped himself up in the issue as part of his vendetta with Louis Bacon. This has included videos portraying himself as the hero of Clifton Bay, which try to press as many racial buttons as possible.

The YouTube video that has been circulating on social media sites recently (although it was originally posted last year) includes a tour of Nygard Cay, with Nygard boasting about how his palace will be rebuilt. More importantly, the video features senior PLP cabinet ministers meeting the great man in his natural habitat. 

Brave Davis, Shane Gibson, Jerome Fitzgerald, Ken Dorsett, Alfred Gray and Perry Gomez are all congratulated by Nygard on "the greatest victory ever". Such shameless posturing led FNM Deputy Leader Loretta Butler-Turner to call for their resignations over influence-peddling - a charge which Gomez considered "ridiculous".

The video also features a discussion of Nygard's interest in anti-aging stem cell research, including one scene where he injects himself with a hypodermic needle and quips to awed onlookers: "Ah, it feels so good, and you can see it's working". 

On a website called the Bahamas National that presents the Nygard storyline, the great man is said to be bringing this science to the world. "I found out there is a lot of upcoming medicine and a lot of new medical advancement going on," he is quoted. "It’s the kind of medicine that everyone wants to be healthier and live longer."

The Christie government recently fast-tracked legislation to facilitate stem-cell research in the Bahamas. And during a recent Independence celebration honouring Bahamians under the age of 40, when broadcaster Wendall Jones lavished praise on Nygard, the fashion mogul urged support for the government's agenda.

In another amusing video Nygard, with flowing blond hair and bearing a carved ceremonial staff, is accompanied by the Rev Simeon Hall and other courtiers to confront the Rev C. B. Moss, one of the original Clifton campaigners who runs yet another Coalition to Save Clifton. Moss has slammed Nygard's dredge and fill operations at Simms Point, which have been ongoing for years despite government injunctions.

In this 'Tarzan' video, Nygard demands to know why he is being attacked when he is not doing anything illegal "under this government." He expresses resentment as someone who has been "dedicated to this country more than any single person in this country." To which Moss replies: "I've heard these stories (about you and Bacon) and I don't care - you should duke it out yourselves."

That is, in effect, what will now happen. In May, Save the Bays lawyer Fred Smith filed for judicial review over "unregulated development" at Simms Point, where Nygard's original three-acre parcel of land has more than doubled over the years. Although a trial date has not been set, this action finally brings Nygard, Bacon and the government together under judicial oversight.

In the meantime, the Clifton Heritage Authority obviously has a lot of work to do in terms of archaeology, restoration and public education at Clifton Heritage Park.

 

Comments

[Stephen Aranha]

You can watch the 1916 movie featuring the "pirate/slave" steps online: http://archive.org/details/20000LeaguesUndertheSea

[Anthony A Newbold]

Great article Larry...

How do we so easily continue to loose sight of what's important?

By the way, how dare you question the motives of the "Saviour of The Bahamas"?:)..

Heaven help us all......

[steve]

Thanks for the info.

[Susan Millar]

Thank you for casting a sane light on this drama...and for the interesting true history of the site.

[Sherrill Callender]

Well done Larry. The false, inflammatory, and ridiculous statements made by Nygard and lapped up by the gullible and unsuspecting Bahamian public is maddening. Let's hope that this accurate accounting of Clifton and Nygard and the Nygard/Bacon brouhaha will get the attention of the Bahamian public in general so then they may be able to have a rational perspective. ALL of the bays and seacoasts of the Bahamas need to be protected. On another but connected note; I understand that a month old study is out that says grouper stocks are down to 1% of what they were 30 years ago. Why isn't that on the front pages of our newspapers and in the news? Grouper isn't even commercially viable anymore and what is going to be done about it? Where are the BNT and BREEF statements about this? The only thing that may work is a three year moratorium on grouper and to get the fishermen to concentrate on fishing for the lion fish which is also a huge threat to groupers. They are a delicious fish too! Thanks for your terrific sane article.
Sherrill Callender

[kirk lopez]

This is an informative article and I would grateful if you be so kind as to share the references for the historical "excerpts" cited in the story, please. Thanks very much...

[larry smith]

Adderley's interview was published in the 2000 edition of the Bahamas Historical Society journal. An article on the early history of the Clifton plantation was published in the 2007 BHS journal. I researched the more recent history myself.

Information on Williamson's early efforts can be found here.... http://www.thanhouser.org/tcocd/Filmography_files/086kaj.htm

http://www.bahamapundit.com/2009/03/undersea-photography-sparked-bahamian-conservation-movement.html

[Simon Rodéhn]

Larry, thank you for this enlightening detail. One important point that was left out was the fact that for many years Nygard protected himself from the "permit people" by hosting members of not only the PLP but also many from the FNM. This "influence" enabled Nygard to operate with impunity during the past 25 years beginning with blocking public access around Simm's point beach from North point beach.

[Harold Munnings]

Thanks Larry. As always, level-headed.

[Rick Lowe]

I see the Pied Piper gave you dishonourable mention as well?
This story gets more bizarre every day.