This time it is Heather Caudle who is making news in England.  Heather is a past student at  St. Joseph's Convent.  
Click on the link here to read the full article

Trinidadian author Ingrid Persaud is the regional winner of the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story prize for her story The Sweet Sop. 
Persaud was among the names of regional winners announced on Monday. 
The overall winner will be announced in Singapore on June 30.
Persaud follows countryman Lance Dowrich who win the regional prize last year. 
A writer and artist, Persaud currently resides in Barbados.  
According to her bio, she came to writing and fine art having first pursued a successful legal career that included teaching and scholarship at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in the United States and King’s College London.
Her creative work has been widely exhibited and her writing featured in several magazines.
Her debut novel, If I Never Went Home (2014) was highly praised.
Other regional winners are Nat Newman (The Pacific), Anushka Jasraj (Asia), Akwaeke Emezi (Africa), and Tracey Fells, Canada and Europe.
The five outstanding stories were successful in a year of fierce competition when the Prize received a record 6,000 entries from across the Commonwealth.
“It speaks to the high quality of the shortlisted stories that the judges’ decisions were rarely straightforward – and it speaks to the high quality of the winners that none of the judges left the conversation unsatisfied by the choices we ended up with. These are engaging and moving stories that honour and understand the potential of the short story form to burrow in on intimate stories and also to give you vast canvases painted with precise strokes. They also reveal the extent to which human concerns cross borders while the ways in which those concerns are played out are always individual and specific," said Kamila Shamsie, Chair, 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Source: Loop News May 24, 2017.

And she is a former student of St. Joseph's Convent, Port of Spain.

When Professor Rhonda McEwen began her academic career in the late 1990s, little did she know she would be at the forefront of the boom in new media that has secured her place as an expert in the field of mobile technology. Since then, she has established herself as a trailblazer in exploring how devices affect the human experience and the way that people with disabilities communicate, and she has just been named the Canada Research Chair in Tactile Interfaces, Communication and Cognition.
It is an “honour to be recognized for [my] work and be given this massive endorsement by the federal government,” says McEwen, of UTM’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology. She will be undertaking three interrelated projects that involve technology such as tablets and smartphones, but also wearable technology and virtual-reality platforms.
“My PhD work focused on young people – and by young people I meant people who were transitioning from high schools into universities – and my interest was in the roles mobile phones played in social support,” says McEwen. “This was in 2006, so this was in the old days – this was pre-smartphones, so people were still on their BlackBerrys or on flip phones – still I could see a shift in social interactions surrounding these new media and I wanted to investigate what was happening for users who were also in transition.”
“Even back then you could see the huge influence that these devices were having and I was really fascinated both from a technological aspect, but also from a social aspect. What are the social consequences of embedding these technologies in our lives?”
In a similar trajectory, she currently researches the communicative interactions that arise when users engage with new media technologies, focusing on the cognitive effects of using touch-input devices.  Her new book, Understanding Tablets from Early Childhood to Adulthood: Encounters with Touch Technology, co-authored with McGill's Adam Dubé, takes a critical look at what is commonly considered to be the intuitive nature of tablets.
“I am interested in what this new, tactile technology means for how we make sense of the world,” says McEwen. “By way of example, people may have read about the ‘quantified self’ where we are tracking data about ourselves, for example ‘how far did you walk today? How much sleep did you get?’”
“These are the devices that are taking data inputs off of our bodies and giving us outputs through our bodies, driven by necessity and creativity by the user, and we have to figure out how to slot this information into our everyday life. This is a new consideration.”
Something that is also new and a somewhat unanticipated for McEwen is watching a Muppet she helped to shape come to life on the small screen: she is an advisor for the long-running, beloved children’s program Sesame Street, and her research informed the creation of Julia, the show’s first character with autism, introduced in April 2017. McEwen, who has been on the advisory board for autism programming for the Sesame Street Workshop since 2013, says it was a great privilege to be involved in this collaborative endeavour.
“Muppets are also media. Julia is a girl-Muppet with a mission to demystify autism for children and the broader society,” says McEwen.  “I was approached by the program coordinators of the Sesame Workshop because of my research on mobile applications (apps) for children on the Autism Spectrum and I worked with some of the finest researchers in the world to provide evidence as content and feedback on design for Julia’s stories and for the accompanying assistive technology apps.” To read a more comprehensive article about Julia, visit the CBC website.
McEwen is extremely enthusiastic about pursuing the CRC projects and the various collaborations she has ongoing with other researchers. She is also proud of her group of dedicated students on the Mississauga campus.
“I have two undergraduate students here through the Research Opportunity Program [ROP] at UTM, and they are working with me on 360-video and virtual-reality project where we are investigating visually-induced motion sickness,” says McEwen. “A completely separate project involves another set of three UTM undergraduate students and looks specifically at children with Rett syndrome, which is a rare genetic disorder that impedes the ability to speak and affects mainly girls, and examines the efficacy of using of eye-tracking on screens as an effective form of communication.”
“I do a lot of work with my undergraduates and I am really proud of that. At UTM we have excellent undergraduate students and my team of researchers here are so curious and engaged. Before this grant came along they volunteered their time, and I paid them when I could from other grants, but now that I have this CRC funding, I’m delighted to have the ability to compensate them for the hard work that they put in.”
Source:  [email protected]

Grand residence, built in 1920s, once graced Farallon Rock.
In 1869, noted English novelist, historian, priest and university professor Charles Kingsley travelled across the Atlantic to Trinidad. He came ashore at the quay in Port of Spain (land then being reclaimed) to find a town of 8,000 souls, and “a multitude of people who are doing nothing”.
He would later write about his travels across the island, and other places, in a book titled At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies.
In the book, Kingsley described taking a steamer (a steam-powered ship ) from Port of Spain to San Fernando, “a gay and growing little town, which was, when we took the island in 1795, only a group of huts”.
It was while in the waters off San Fernando that Kingsley took note, and later wrote “I saw, some quarter of a mile out at sea, a single stack of rock, which is said to have been joined to the mainland in the memory of the fathers of this generation; and on shore, composed, I am told, of the same rock, that hill of San Fernando, which forms a beacon by sea and land for many a mile around”.
Kingsley’s description of the stack is one of the first records of the existence of what would later come to be known as Farallon Rock (from the Spanish farallon, meaning “cliff” or “pillar”).
Except that the description given by Kingsley would be lost to all who know the Gulf of Paria. That’s because for as far back as anyone can remember, there has been no rocky islet off San Fernando. What one sees instead is the unlikely form of a building standing more than a kilometre out to sea, upon which grows a single tree, and behind which is the outline of Venezuela.
Unknown to many is that this foundation was built on the rock, and the base of an impressive home, two storeys above water, in which the area’s most affluent frolicked. How the rock came to be claimed as privately owned is uncertain, but building on it would have taken considerable time, and big money. More impressive was the effort involved in taking the construction material out to the site and working with the tides to raise a concrete foundation— which is all that is left.
Historian and author Michael Anthony said he always wondered about the origin of the building, and during the research for his book Anaparima –The History of San Fernando and the Naparimas, he came up with the name Hobson.
It turns out Anthony was correct. The last family in San Fernando to use Farallon Rock as their private paradise was the Mokunds, up until the 70s.
The family acquired the property from the Synes, a family made rich by the entrepreneurship of patriarch Asgaralli Syne, who history records as being the first to start a private bus service (from Siparia to San Fernando, and later to St James) in 1910, a mode of mass transit that would ultimately help lead to the end of passenger train service in Trinidad in the 60s (Syne Village Siparia is named after the family).
The Synes bought the property from another set of prominent San Fernandians—the Gittens family—who were spending their weekends out at sea from as early as the 1940s. The Gittens family owned a dental practice along Pointe-a-Pierre Road (now the site of a newly-built, but abandoned CLICO office), and were also involved in the often despised business of quarrying on the Fernando Hill, which only ended in 1976.
However, it was the Hobson family who had the fortune to undertake the build. The house was likely built in the 1920s by Leonard Manning Hobson, a prominent attorney, who would later become the Mayor of San Fernando (and whose hilltop home at Circular Road, San Fernando, would be acquired by the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union, and used by the famed CLR James for several years).
Kennedy “Kong” Sooklalsingh, 80, who operated the Gittens quarry, recalled boating out to the house to spend the weekend at Farallon. “I would go out with there with my wife and children and Rosemary Gittens, who owned the quarry. We were there in ten minutes. There was electricity from a generator, a caretaker, and a lot of fishing. It was a memorable time”.
Victor Edoo, 70, who was a frequent guest of the Mokunds, said the house sitting in the sea was never considered unusual “since it was there before anyone of us was even born”.
Edoo recalled that his sister and her husband honeymooned at the house, that would also, during the course if its existence, host Easter parties that would rival today’s all-inclusives (there were eight bedrooms on the top floor and an open ground floor used as a dance hall).
Anthony, who spent some of his early years in San Fernando, also recalled people swimming out to the rock as a dare (at least one was known to have drowned in the attempt), and the house being used as a turning point for the annual January 1 San Fernando regatta.
But without a permanent resident, the house became a fisherman’s hangout, and was vandalised and dismantled over the decades.
Combined with the action of the waves, the foundation has fallen away, exposing in places the original rock that Kingsley described, when he saw it 144 years ago.
Source:  By Richard Charan, Virtual Museum of T&T

what's left of the house today

People erroneously assume that upon expiration of their five year indentureship contracts, coolie labourers from India (1845-1917) were automatically handed five acres of land in lieu of a return passage to India as an incentive to stay in the colony. This is not true. The incentive only existed from 1860 and applied only to those who served a full term of the contract. All incentives ceased in 1880 when it was determined that enough had settled in Trinidad to provide a permanent labour force.
The Indian who saved from his pittance and bought out his contract received nothing. He and those before 1860, were left to survive on what little they had saved from their wages ($2.50/month for an adult male, $1.75/month for a female, $0.75 for children up to 12). Neither did the incentive consist of land. It was simply five pounds in cash with which the majority purchased crown lands, which after 1870 were available for one pound per acre.
Naturally, there were those who for reasons of profligacy or ill-luck ended up as vagrants on the streets of Port-of-Spain. In 1904, it was estimated that as many 140 Indian vagrants slept in Port-of-Spain, most near Columbus Square.
From 1849, an official known as the Protector of the Immigrants was appointed to oversee the general welfare of the immigrants, ensuring that they were treated fairly. Often enough, these bureaucrats were corrupt slackers, who took massive bribes from estate owners to not “rock the boat”.
The only one who seems to have been a man of energy and conscience was Charles Melville whose father, Henry Melville (and ironically enough, Protector of the Slaves before emancipation) had been a medical doctor and a man of great reputation in the colony.
Charles took a dangerous stance in taking his job seriously and arguing with the all-powerful sugar plantocracy for better rights for the Indians. Since the manager of Usine Ste Madeleine was more powerful than the Governor in those days, Melville soon suffered the fate of the conscientious civil servant and was axed.
Melville’s successor was Major Comins (1895-1910), an honest soldier and owner of Glenside Estate in Tunapuna. Comins had been an officer in India and was thought to have been the best fit for the job since he understood “the Indian Problem.” Major Comins travelled extensively across the estates, inspecting barracks, and the dreadful living conditions of the Indians on the plantations. His scathing report published in 1902, and revised in 1908 is an indictment on a labour system that was little better than slavery.
He was particularly aggrieved over what he saw at Woodford Lodge Estate where Indians were worked longer than stipulated hours, kept on the estate by armed guards, left untreated at a filthy estate hospital and fed on scanty provisions.
It was, however, generally understood that as a planter himself, he sought the colonial interests and moderated his views to such an extent as to be a tool of the establishment and not in favour of those he was supposed to protect.
The last Protector of the Immigrants was Arnauld De Boissiere in 1927, a playboy and dandy who only held the office for the 400 pounds a year it paid. In Port-of-Spain, Indian vagrants were a lost people, they could not return to India, and even if they could, they would not have been better off.
In Trinidad, they were alien, many spoke little or no English, and were considered less than human, both by the middle and upper class of society, the barrackyard dwellers, and the colonial authorities.
Most Indian vagrants survived as porters at sixpence a load. The main employers were marchandes (female vendors of edibles), and laundresses who would engaged porters to carry the bundles of soiled clothing collected from the better homes in Woodbrook and St Clair, returning the freshly ironed and starched pieces, neatly folded on a wooden tray, carried by an itinerant porter.
Some fortunate displaced Indians found accommodation at the Ariapita Asylum (known as the Poor House) until that facility was closed in 1929. Largely, most begged charity on the streets until death claimed them, their bodies being consigned to the earth of the Pauper’s cemetery in St James, opened in 1900.
In Port-of-Spain, Indian vagrants were a lost people, they could not return to India, and even if they could, they would not have been better off.
In Trinidad, they were alien, many spoke little or no English, and were considered less than human, both by the middle and upper class of society, the barrackyard dwellers, and the colonial authorities.
Source: the late Angelo Bissessarsingh - Virtual Museum of T&T