Today marks exactly fifty years since I signed my first employment contract as a journalist on April 1, 1976, as Editor of The Crusader newspaper.
I’d been writing to that newspaper long-before, with my observations on politics and culture, after having long-enjoyed the privilege of circumnavigating the world — as a St. Mary’s College (SMC) student.
I’d also been writing long before that, keeping diaries while sailing during every Summer holidays (July to September) on The Geest Line’s ‘banana boats’ as ‘deck boy’, plying The Atlantic on some of the fastest cargo ships of that time (1969-71) and thereafter on charters that took me to every continent.
I’d also been formatted to sail and write by my dad, Pilot Charles V.E. Bousquet, a lifelong sailor who sailed the Seven Seas during World War II and insisted, from his own experience, that ‘You have to go to sea to see where to go…’
He insisted all his sons (we had no sisters) had to ‘Go to sea’ — and in my case, that I read all the newspapers he brought home daily from the ships he guided into Castries harbour, because ‘Reading makes the man’.
Additionally, growing-up in what used to be one of the first households in Hospital Road to have had a radio during the war, I had to follow tradition and listen to the ‘BBC World News’ every morning (at 7am) — with my dad, who told me its broadcasts were so-accurate that ‘If any announcer makes a mistake on the air, he’ll be fired forthwith!’
After years of reading, listening and writing, it was somehow pre-destined (predetermined) that my first job ashore (after forcibly quitting sailing for health reasons) would be in the writing business.
Captains (of the ships I sailed on) who discovered my daily diaries did tell my dad I was ‘better at writing’ — and one actually enrolled me to do a Correspondence Course while at sea, for an ‘O Level’ General Certificate of Education (GCE) in English Language – which I passed and is still today my only education certificate.
Like my dad used to say to remind us of his own upbringing in Soufriere as one of four brothers: ‘I didn’t go to university, not even on the steps to deliver a message…’
But the writer and English bard in George Odlum, the Crusader’s publisher, chose me for me the job of editor – starting at the very top – and also entrusting me to write editorials and his folksy political columns ‘Queek Quak’ and ‘Cocky & Stocky’.
After two contractual terms at The Crusader, I was invited by Rick Wayne to take up a similar position at The Star – which I did, also for two contractual terms.
And while at both Crusader and Star, I was also the local correspondent and distributor for Caribbean Contact, the monthly organ of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC), edited by veteran Rickey Singh.
Between Odlum, Wayne and Singh I garnered all I needed to know to always be better at my craft — especially language, editing and creative communication.
And from the likes of Earl Huntley, Hilaire Alexander, Sam ‘Jook Bwa’ Flood and Marcellus Miller, I honed my bi-lingual skills in both writing and broadcasting.
In 1980, I left the island for Grenada, spending two years there (until January 1982) deepening my skills within a revolutionary context, regionally and internationally, as Chief Reporter at the state-owned Free West Indian (FWI) newspaper and News Editor at Radio Free Grenada (RFG).
Likewise, in 1993, I responded positively to an invitation from President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana to move with my family to Georgetown, to assist in consolidating the Return of Democracy in the 1992 presidential elections that ended 28 years of dictatorship.
I spent six years in Guyana as Chairman of the Board of the state-owned Guyana Television Company (GTV), a Director of the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) that ran the only radon station in the entire country and Editor of The Mirror newspaper (weekly organ of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) – all three posts simultaneously.
I would visit home in 1989 to attend that year’s CARICOM Summit – featuring South African President Nelson Mandela — as a delegate of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, led by President Janet Jagan.
I finally returned home in 1999 to take up the post of Press Secretary to Prime Minister Dr Kenny D. Anthony, based on a promise I made when he decided to accept the St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) invitation to lead it into the 1997 General Elections, but was unable to fulfil after President Jagan died in 1996.
I served two terms as Dr Anthony’s Press Secretary until the SLP’s 2006 defeat; and instead of returning as Press Secretary when the party returned to office in 2011, I was allowed to edit the weekly ‘Nationwide’ government newspaper supplement in The Voice every Saturday.
Between 2016 and 2021, I suffered several family tragedies, losing at least six relatives (including my wife, brother and uncle in one year) and a near-fatal vehicle ‘accident’ on May 23, 2020 in the middle of COVID-19, on the same day George Floyd was killed in the USA.
I survived to remain in doctors’ hands and rehabilitative care for the next six years, but even though George died, his death sparked a new wave in the then-growing international movement for Reparations for Slavery.
My first 50 years in journalism would not have been what it was without the political and cultural activism that I practiced from my days at SMC when like-minded radical students, influenced by the peaceful ‘Hippie’ and radical ‘Black Power’ movements, established a Students Revolutionary Organization (SRO), which shared copies of Cuba’s ‘Granma’ newspaper and publications from the International Union of Students (IUS).
In 1976, like-minded comrades would establish the Workers Revolutionary Movement (WRM), of which I was General Secretary and editor of its organ ‘Tambu’.
By 1979, I was part of the movement that led to the establishment and registration of the Iyanola Rastafari Improvement Association (IRIA) and was Editor of its newspaper ‘Calling Rastafari’.
A few years later, like-minded journalists established the St. Lucia Media Workers Association (SLMWA) and eventually the Caribbean Association of Media Workers (CAMWORK), both of which were associated with the international organization of Journalists (IOJ).
In 2016, my crowning national achievement was being awarded a Saint Lucia Medal of Honour (Gold) by the Order of Saint Lucia, for my then-40-year contribution to journalism and media training, at home and abroad.
I’ve spent the First Quarter of Century 21 also approaching my biblical allocation of ‘three-score-and-ten’ in the Second Quarter of a new world where journalism is both more of what it used to be and less of what it can be.
Every day I’m asked ‘When you’ll write your first book?’ — and I’ve also spent equal time responding, each time, saying:
‘At a rate of (at least) three articles per day for 50 years, I’ve written over-18, 250 articles I can account for – 30 years in national regional and international records, newspaper and broadcasting archives and the last 20 online or saved on several devices…’
Likewise, my reports to the likes of Radio Antilles, Caribbean News Agency (CANA), the BBC Caribbean Report, Voice of America, Radio Free Grenada, Guyana’s GBC and GTV are all in their respective archives – only waiting for the chid to be born who’ll be destined to collate them into volumes.
I’ve so-far spent a-life-well-lived doing what I like and love most: daily ploughing the world’s grapevines.
And will I do it all again just like I did?
Of course!