Happy New Year to everyone!

This year, like any other, has its milestone anniversaries. The first one that comes to mind is that 2016 marks 225 years since the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in Jamaica. The Roman Catholic Church was the first Christian church ever to enter Jamaica as Christopher Columbus landed on our shores in 1494. However, with the English capture of Jamaica in 1655, the Roman Catholic Church was banned for 136 years until 1791. The effect of the ban, however, was 137 years, as it took a year for a Roman Catholic priest to enter Jamaica in 1792.

This year marks 150 years since the arrival of Sir John Peter Grant as governor of Jamaica in 1866. He succeeded the tyrant Edward John Eyre, who had George William Gordon, Paul Bogle, and some 900-odd others hanged in the aftermath of the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. Sir John Peter Grant instituted infrastructural reforms that are still being utilised today in Jamaica. These are the Kingston Public Hospital, the Bellevue (mental) Hospital, the Marescaux Road water treatment plant and the Rio Cobre irrigation scheme.

This year marks 125 years since the staging of the Great Exhibition of 1891 on the same grounds that houses Wolmer’s Boys’ School today. It was the first attempt at turning Jamaica into a tourist destination. After slavery was abolished, sugar declined as the estate costs went up with the ex-slaves becoming employed workers who demanded pay for their services. Jamaica then turned to bananas and other fruits such as coconuts and later mangoes. But fruits alone could not turn the economy around, so the next plan was tourism.

Please understand that bauxite was not discovered in Jamaica until the 1940s, so that was not an option at the time. At the Great Exhibition, items such as rum, molasses, and lumber such as lignum vitae (used as motes under the ships in those days), mahogany, and cedar were put on display. The idea was to encourage people to come from all over the world and spend some money here while they traded with items that they brought from their homelands. This was the time when the Lebanese entered Jamaica, as it coincided with wars in their homeland.

The Lebanese came and sold cloth and many of them stayed, such as the Hannas, the Issas, the Azans, the Azars, the Seagas, and so on. However, the Great Exhibition did not have the desired effect of kick-starting the tourist industry. It would be about 10 to 15 years later that the United Fruit Company, which bought bananas from Jamaica, would get the tourist trade going by bringing Americans on their boats to Port Antonio.

Later on, Doctor McCatty’s cave (known to the world as Doctor’s Cave) would attract tourists to Montego Bay, and even later Dunn’s River Falls would bring tourists into Ocho Rios. In the year 1961, the dumping up of the Negril swamps to extend the tourism product was implemented by the Government headed by Norman Washington Manley.

One hundred years ago, in 1916, an African-Jamaican student at Jamaica College (JC), a school known then as the preserve of mainly white students, was track, cricket, and football captain at JC. Midnight-black in skin colour, Rudolph Burke was the son of the first black-skinned landowner of thousands of acres of land in St Thomas, who decided to send at least one of his many sons to JC. Rudolph Burke was president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society at a time when tropical fruits were the mainstay of the Jamaican economy. Rudolph Burke also established the annual Denbigh Show.

Burke was parish councillor in St Thomas for the 30 years, between 1921 (getting elected before his 22nd birthday) and 1951. He was also a foundation member of the People’s National Party. Between 1955 and 1962 he was minister without portfolio while Norman Manley was chief minister (and later premier). In 1962, Rudolph Burke was Norman Manley’s candidate for governor general, but the Jamaica Labour Party won the election that year and Sir Alexander Bustamante, as prime minister, recommended Sir Clifford Campbell, who served as governor general from December 1, 1962 to February 28, 1973.

We can celebrate the achievements of Rudolph Burke in schoolboy sports, agriculture, and politics, especially with this being 100 years since JC won all three sports that he captained. Should I decline to write this just because he was my grandfather? Some say that I should allow others to write about Rudolph Burke and Earle Maynier (my maternal grandfather). But others hardly ever do, as indeed they are negligent in writing about many other aspects of Jamaica’s history. If I never wrote about anyone else then the complaint would have merit, but since I have abundant evidence of writing about others, it does not.

This year is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Although Jamaica is 54 years independent this year, there are many Jamaicans who are still devoted to ‘Misses Queen’.

This year marks 75 years since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii (then a territory, now a state of the United States of America). It triggered a war between the US and Japan, and both eventually fought for either side of World War II with the US on the side of Britain, and its allies and Japan on the side of Germany. The US, as a condition of entering World War II, wanted self-government for the British colonies to cut the red tape in trade arrangements. It helped to speed up the coming of self-government in Jamaica which started in December 1944.

This year is also 75 years since the first credit unions started in Jamaica with the Roman Catholic Church playing the leading role. And 2016 marks 60 years since the death of Dr Hyacinth Lightbourne-Maynier, in whose name a visiting nursing service was established by her stepdaughters. She was a sister of the late Robert Lightbourne and was the second wife of Earle Maynier (later Jamaica’s first high commissioner to Canada.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com