TOMMOROW, beginning at 10 am, a memorial service will be held for our departed colleague, John Maxwell, in the chapel at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where John contributed his last best days training present and future journalists.

In response to last week’s column in which I made my own paltry tribute to the iconoclast, some of John’s admirers have sent their own tribute. For lack of space, all cannot be accommodated in this column. However, the Observer is publishing a keepsake publication, “John Maxwell — the pen is mightier than the sword”. Tributes are being accepted until December 24 at allend@amaicaobserver.com.

Neil Howard – neilhoward@blueyonder.co.uk

I was moved by your piece on the passing of John Maxwell. I did not know him well, we spoke from time to time about reopening the Jamaica Railway and met just once, in Amsterdam, while he was enduring treatment.

It is worth remembering for the sake of the record that in 1957 he broke the story of the Kendal train crash in the London Evening News, which ensured the subsequent enquiry was properly conducted and gave the old Jamaica Government Railway nowhere to hide. It was subsequently abolished in favour of the Jamaica Railway Corporation. He told me it was the first story he had sold abroad.

I think he was a cross between John Pilger and Keith Waterhouse — a fascinating mix of angry and funny.

Jan Voordouw, Panos – jvoordouw@aol.com

John’s life was indeed an example for many. Always committed and passionate, he felt he could not retire because of the many ills which haunt our societies. I have known John since 1987 when he did a stint helping me in UNEP, where immediately he contributed to shaking up the system, and making it better.

We all know him as an engaged environmentalist, sometimes a lonely fighter. He also enjoyed nature, for instance through building up a collection of pictures of Jamaican birds. But fighting for poor and voiceless people was really his trademark. I think it is noteworthy that he took up very regular reporting on Haiti in later life (although he already went there in 1963 in an attempt to interview Francois Duvalier; in 1995, invited by Panos, he made a second visit to Haiti). John saw that this was a major Caribbean story which remained under-reported by the regional media.

A life well-lived. Rest in peace, John!

Carla-Rae Briggs – carlaraebriggs@yahoo.co.uk

May we treasure all that he taught us over the years. Condolences to his family.

Chris Yaw – chrsyaw@yahoo.com

RIP Maxwell, a giant of his time.

Ewart Walters – spectrum@storm.ca

I cannot think of anyone to whom the word “peerless” could better be applied. There was simply no other journalist like John. You could fire him, you could blacklist him — and some did — but you could not shut him up; he always found a way to rise and thrive, and not simply survive. Always, he seemed instinctively to know the right thing to do and it did not seem to matter whether it was print, radio or television; he was still John Maxwell.

We both came through Public Opinion and The Gleaner — fortuitously not at the same time, for John’s strength was his forceful if likeable irascibility. However, we worked together on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation Television’s ‘Firing Line’ public affairs programme where he paraded his skills, tilting swords and wielding sledge-hammers with the best of them. But we were in agreement on many, many things. Happily, I spent much time in fruitful correspondence with him over the past decade or so and with his permission reproduced several of his columns in my newspaper, The Spectrum.

I am satisfied that he, an inveterate reader, was at once the best informed and most courageous journalist in the Western hemisphere, perhaps in the world. His grasp was universal; he wrote as easily about personages, issues and events in other countries as he did about Jamaica, often using them to illustrate his points on his own land.

Unrelentingly, he ruffled feathers and attacked holy cows with an almost urchin zeal. His support of Haiti and his defence of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide; his lifelong campaign against injustice; people named Luis Posado Carilles, Juan Bosch, John Bolton and George Bush; right-wing excesses; the World Trade Organisation; liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation, imperial domination and unbridled corporatism — in Washington DC, at Monsanto and its genetically modified food; in the Cockpit Country; etc, etc, were the hallmark of the universal master of journalism.

An important fact to remember is that John was honest. He once ran for a seat in parliament on a PNP ticket and always declared publicly that he was a PNP man. There are some strident individuals who hide their partisan political preferences and pretend objectivity. Not John Maxwell. At all times you knew whom you were dealing with. His sharp, bright journalistic sword swung and cut both sides.

He believed in himself. And he believed in the line from Shakespeare: “To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou can’st not then be false to any man.”

We will not see another like him anytime soon.

A journalist for over 48 years, Ewart Walters, CD, MJ, is the Editor & Publisher of The Spectrum newspaper in Ottawa, Canada.

Send comments to The Spike at desal@cwjamaica.com

Desmond Allen, aka The Spike, a 37-year veteran of journalism, is a former president of the Press Association of Jamaica and founding general secretary of the regional Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM)