- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 03:06

TTPS: Unexpected protector of history

DEBBIE JACOB BITTERSWEET is the best way I can describe last week’s news that the Barbados government had purchased TT production company Banyan Ltd’s archives, which contain four decades of Caribbean cultural and historical heritage. I ran the gamut of feelings, from joy that Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley recognised the significance of preserving this gold mine of cultural treasures to sadness that, once again, we had failed as a nation to preserve and value our own historical resources. Why couldn’t we see what Barbados had no trouble recognising? Our country’s ambivalence about its history puzzles me. Gratefully, we have the National Trust of TT, our stalwart guardian of tangible cultural and historical artefacts, mostly visible in the historical buildings they protect. The Carnival Institute, dedicated to preserving Carnival culture and artefacts, has had some glorious moments, but it has largely gone silent since pan historian and film-maker Kim Johnson retired from the helm. I am gratefully but painfully aware of how Timmy Mora, head of Visual Art and Production Ltd, has rescued cultural, historical and political archives from independent and government sources. He has the equipment to preserve archives. He bought and catalogued Carnival film between 1858 and 1972 from businessman Ernest Phills. But how do we get the public to realise the importance of preserving history, and how do we get more people, companies and government agencies to invest in rescuing our history from oblivion? Surely the situation is not hopeless. A few days after hearing about Banyan’s good fortune, I got a pleasant surprise that gave me room for hope. The chain of unexpected events went like this: Police Museum curator Kara Roopsing informed me that the Police Academy Library plans to keep copies of my book Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago: A 70-Year-History in its library. She arranged for a handover at the police headquarters in Port of Spain. The event, with Commissioner of Police Allister Guevarro present, turned out to be a celebration of the police canine section and its history for International Dog Day on August 26. Soon, Roopsingh will reopen the Police Museum, proving in another important way that history is important to the TTPS. We think of the police as reactive, operating in the moment, oblivious to culture or history. Ideally, their function is to wipe out crime, but it turns out their mission is also, in some small but significant way, to protect history. The police dogs’ history has its place in bookstores, the police recruits’ library, in the Police Museum, in Costaatt’s policing class and the Hugh Wooding Law School’s book club. So the police dogs' history lives on. I managed to preserve it before the Caroni flood of 2018 claimed the dogs’ files. I hope other companies and organisations will have that vision of preserving history that the police did under Police Commissioners James Philbert and Stephen Williams and Mounted and Canine Branch Superintendents Patsy Joseph and Geoffrey Hospedales. For 14 years I had unrestricted access to police canine officers and permission to use the dogs’ files. The police never interfered with my work in writing this book. In my daydreams, I see other writers like me surrounded by historical records to tell an important story that would have been lost without our efforts. I wish the dogs’ files had been digitised and preserved. I have experienced support in every step of my research and writing journey from the day Sgt Larry Millette dusted off the first dog file for me to my book launch last year at the Cascade/St Ann’s Community Centre where police communications officer Joanne Archie and DCP Wayne Mystar came to show their support. When Mottley announced she had bought Banyan’s archives at the Carifesta celebration on August 22, Christopher Laird had described the agreement as "extraordinary." He said he had tried for a decade to get local companies to buy Banyan’s archives. Comedian Errol Fabian also lamented the lack of interest in Trinidad for preserving that history. As I stood in police headquarters last week, holding my book in one hand and shaking the commissioner’s hand with the other, I thought about how, even in a state of emergency, the police made time to honour and preserve a piece of history. In my book, the police have set an example for other individuals, companies and even the government to follow. It seems the police have figured out what we should all know: you can’t operate in the present without knowing and honouring your past. The post TTPS: Unexpected protector of history appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.