The news of the pending eviction of the Chaguaramas Military History Museum by the Chaguaramas Development Authority is a mere reflection of the continued mindless approach to heritage and development.
Integrated Sustainable Development
Is there any interest in integrated development, and to understand that one needs not be done at the expense of the other and each can rather enhance benefits to all concern? Without a national vision for heritage that are integrated into development plans we will continue to have this kind of idiocy cropping up.
The Military History Museum is a national treasure and represent the invaluable work of an individual and his supporters and that that individual no longer has the energy to fight for it does not mean it should be raised. It is one of the few real substantial heritage institutions that exists in its own right in T&T, struggling and succeeding where better resourced national museums are dismally deficient. They can well take a page out of the kind of commitment it takes to sustaining an institution like this.
Strategic Planning
The Chaguaramas Development Authority will do well to note that its current location makes it ideal for integrating it into its upgrade plans for the district, apart form the fact of the historic-on-several fronts district of Chaguaramas which speak to our existence from prehistory, through colonialism, independence and beyond, is iconic as part of marine, underwater, built, natural, political, social and historical evolution, and really, a boardwalk (!!??), and the Chaguaramas Development Authority’s development (!!??) plans???
And where does that coincide or depart from “national” development plans?
Inspiration for next generations
Gaylord Kelshall is a decorated national hero, who even without the decorations, and his history in the navy has through his work at the museum, the model club, outdoor war game activities and others has been an inspiration to many young and old. The hobby club actively gave participants an outlet for any trigger-happiness in a creative, constructive and safe manner that the millions misdirected funding in being poured into short sighted projects in South East POS could do well to learn from on how to effectively empower young people into constructive activities.
I sat at Kelshall’s feet many times as a young reporter, initiating the Discover Trinidad and Tobago series which later also inspired AVM Television’s winning series Cross Country and my writings of this series, as he filled the blanks in my knowledge of local history and connections that neither primary, nor secondary not tertiary level education provided then, nor now.
In editing and writing the introduction to his book, The Gateway To South America (http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23185567M/The_gateway_to_South_America), how humbled I felt, and privileged to be so close to knowledge of the pivotal role Trinidad played in the revolutionary movements towards Independence of so many of the countries of Latin America and how the South American heroes as Simon Bolivar and others were as much ours as theirs – an element that is glaringly absent in our education system. It was knowledge that, categorically, no one else holds! CDA should be looking to capture that rather than start a new war.
As his health fails, the knowledge Kelshall has projected and transferred into the museum is an irreplaceable legacy. The CDA should see the Chaguaramas Military History Museum as a monument to this exemplary citizen as well as the story of not only the Trinidad and Tobago and the region, not try to tuck it out of site.
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CDA moves to evict Military Museum: Founders want $25m to move | The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper
CDA moves to evict Military Museum: Founders want $25m to move
by Joshua Surtees
Thu Sep 12 2013
The Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) has served an eviction notice on the Chaguaramas Military Museum, even though the museum’s owners have a Cabinet note issued in 1991 granting them a 30-year lease.The CDA is claiming to be committed to the museum, but wrote to its management on September 6 giving notice that the museum would be evicted by October 6.The CDA wants the site to expand its boardwalk.
Asked why an eviction notice had been served, with seven years of the agreed lease remaining, Joycelin Hargreaves, CEO of the CDA, said: “We want to assure the public we are fully committed to the museum and the service it provides. We are trying to work out the best location for the museum. Their plans for development are not consistent with our plans.”Asked what the plans were for the site where the museum has stood for 23 years, she said the area had been “earmarked for a development of the boardwalk.”
The owners of the museum have rejected the offer of another site near the military rifle range, saying moving there would cost $25 million.The museum, founded by decorated WWII commander Gaylord Kelshall and his wife Linda, houses artifacts representing the military eras of T&T from the Spanish 16th and 17th century onwards. Kelshall is in poor health after a stroke and his wife runs the museum.
History buff and T&T Guardian columnist Angelo Bissesarsingh described the museum as being “selflessly put at the disposal of the T&T public, almost as a charity. Commander Kelshall did it all using his own resources.”The CDA has proposed a new site in Grandwood, on the edge of a military rifle range. There is no building at the site to house a museum, but Hargreaves said there was “infrastructure.”
But Linda Kelshall said when she was taken on a tour of the proposed new site, 200 feet above the main road, all she saw was bush. She rejected the proposed site as unworkable and unsatisfactory.The Kelshalls estimate the cost of moving the artefacts and relocating them would come to $25 million, and building a new museum would cost upwards of $150 million.Linda Kelshall told the T&T Guardian: “Unless they give us the $25 million it would cost us to move, we are not moving. Pay us and we will move.
“The CDA has told us that if we move to Grandwood they would issue us a new 30-year lease. We consider that blackmail.”The CDA addressed the cost of relocation in a statement issued yesterday, saying: “If there is a cost issue, the CDA will work collaboratively with the museum to support the institution’s ongoing vision as an important stakeholder on the peninsula.”
Minister of Planning Bhoe Tewarie said he had chaired consultative meetings between the museum and the CDA, and resolving the matter was down to negotiations between the two parties.”It’s an important museum, a voluntary initiative and I want a reasonable resolution,” he said.
What the Cabinet note says
Cabinet by Minute No. 1888 dated October 17, 1991, written by the general manager of the CDA and signed by the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Planning and Mobilisation, agreed to approve: “The grant of a 30-year lease in respect of approximately 1.4 hectares (3.45 acres) of land at Carenage Bay, Chaguaramas, to the Military History, Model Engineers and Builders Society of T&T for the development of a military history and aviation museum at no cost to the society for the first five years, at the end of five years the lease will be reviewed with a view to determining the appropriate charge to the society.”
No review or determination of the “appropriate rent” referred to in the Cabinet note ever took place and the museum has remained on the site rent-free for 23 years. The annual costs of running the museum are almost $1 million, according to its owners, and are barely covered by revenues achieved via admission fees.
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Dr Kris Rampersad is an international sustainable development strategist, National Geographic Educator, UNESCO-trained Cultural Heritage Educator Facilitator and MultiMedia Journalist. She pioneered Caribbean reporting on sustainable bio-cultural issues of Small Island Developing States, the Caribbean and developing world and has worked with international development institutions of the United Nations, Inter-American and Caribbean for advancement of South-South cooperation.
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The CDA is a sell-out establishment and quite rightly said has no national vision. They intend to do the same for the golf club at the Chaguaramas Golf Course. It is the first and probably still the only golf course in Trinidad & Tobago that is open to the public. They plan to extend to an 18-hole PGA style course (good intentions) but through the foreign privatisation. This therefore means Chaguaramas Golf Club (1974) will no longer exist.
What do we Trinis have against HISTORY.
Please leave the museum alone. Who will gain from
replacing a “museum, with a board walk.Boy are we
ever in trouble in this Island paradise of ours.
Why can't they rehouse them in one (or even two!) of the partly or soon to be be fully (we are told) Magnificent Seven? Whitehall is standing empty, Stollmeyers Castle has already been extensively restored….so why not?