When I went off to university at the tender age of 17, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Four years later, I graduated with a degree in English and History and STILL had no idea! My mother and father urged me to go to Bequia for a year to help at the local high school, perhaps time away from Canada would help me figure out what to do with the rest of my life!. My sister Mary and her husband Dave were already on the Island as CUSO volunteers ( the Canadian version of Peace Corps ), so I would not be entirely alone in a strange place.
My mother and father had discovered Bequia several years earlier, and had decided to aim for early retirement in order to live on the island. Dad, an Anglican Minister, had once held the post of Director of the Canadian Hearing Society and was therefore an authority on deafness. Mom worked as an executive at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and was a force to be reckoned with. Together they started the School for the Deaf, which in turn became the Bequia School for the Handicapped and then the School for Special Needs. Today it’s called the Sunshine School. This was accomplished under the umbrella of the Bequia Mission, an organization the two of them founded and ran with love and dedication for many years. The Mission arranged for scholarships locally as well as abroad, helped equip hospitals throughout the Grenadines and made much-needed repairs to homes and churches. There was much more to the Bequia Mission, this is just an outline of what it was and how it all started.
Bequia is the largest of the Grenadines in the Windward Islands, nine miles across the channel from the mainland, St. Vincent. It is only seven square miles and has a population of about five thousand. To get there I would have to fly from Toronto to Barbados, then catch a regional airline to St. Vincent. Bequia had no airport, so I would be overnighting on the mainland and taking the ferry to Bequia the following day.
With a bit of money and a small suitcase I left Canada in October of 1977 to spend what I thought would be one year on the tiny Island of Bequia. I had seen pictures and heard stories over the years but had no clear notion of what living on the Island would be like. Dad had snapped photos of scantily clad children with goats beside a shack, wild waves on the windward side of the Island, the ferry being off-loaded and of course lots of church pictures. When the Friendship Rose ferry rounded the point the first thing I saw were several beautiful yachts at anchor in Admiralty Bay, and I felt a wave of relief ….. not so primitive after all!
The hustle and bustle on the wharf as the ferry arrived was somewhat daunting. Bequia was full of colorful characters and each one made a point of being on the jetty at boat time. The old wooden schooner was heavily loaded with an interesting (and I DO mean interesting!) mix of cargo, which was being claimed with noisy enthusiasm. As my sister was welcoming me to the Island the heavens opened up and it started to rain, and WHAT a rain it was! It was a torrential downpour so strong I was in danger of being knocked over. It continued to pour for two days, evidently normal during the rainy season. When the sun made its appearance on the third day I saw the Island for the first time, and was blown away by its tropical beauty. For the next year I would be living in Paradise!
