Michelle Loubon

To­co, a rur­al vil­lage with an Amerindi­an name, has shot to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al promi­nence as the home­town of T&T's Olympic gold medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott. Al­ready pop­u­lar as a sea­side es­cape, the dis­trict gained greater promi­nence when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said its best known land­mark, the To­co Light­house, would be re­named the "Ker­shon Wal­cott To­co Light­house." Lo­cal au­thor and his­to­ri­an Michael An­tho­ny fo­cused on the "pret­ty vil­lage" of To­co in his book Towns and Vil­lages (pub­lished in 2001.) In the fore­word, An­tho­ny said he want­ed to share knowl­edge of T&T with young stu­dents and in­ter­est­ed peo­ple. An ex­cerpt said: "This work was un­der­tak­en out of a cu­ri­ousi­ty to look in­to the back­ground of our set­tle­ments to see how they first ap­peared on the Trinidad map, and to find out what led to their es­tab­lish­ment. "So many peo­ple have asked them­selves 'How is it so many of our vil­lages have Span­ish names, as in the case of San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do and Rio Claro; while oth­ers have French names like Care­nage and Pointe-a-Pierre. And oth­ers have Amerindi­an names like Ma­yaro and Ari­ma.'

"In To­ba­go, it is no­ticed Eng­lish-ori­ent­ed names like Scar­bor­ough, Rox­bor­ough and Ply­mouth abound, and not so many of the Span­ish or French. "It is iron­ic since To­ba­go has been a French pos­ses­sion and Trinidad nev­er was. Nei­ther are there many Carib names in To­ba­go al­though the very name of the is­land is of Carib ori­gin." An ex­cerpt on To­co said: "Turn­ing from the mist and spray of Point Galera we see the vil­lage cen­tre which lies about two miles to the west. It was here that an Eng­lish force un­der Sir Hen­ry Colt came ashore in 1631 with­out the knowl­edge of the Span­ish set­tle­ment and tried to found a set­tle­ment. They were ex­pelled by the Dutch who land­ed South of here in 1637, and who formed a close al­liance with the Amerindi­ans in the area." It added: "Not much hap­pened but a lit­tle more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er Ca­puchin monks came on the scene. "They found­ed a mis­sion a lit­tle to the west of where the vil­lage cen­tre is to­day. "The mis­sion was for the con­ver­sion of the Amerindi­ans, a great num­ber of whom seemed to have lived in this area. The mean­ing of To­co is not clear. The area of the mis­sion re­ferred to is known as Mis­sion Vil­lage. "The po­si­tion of that mis­sion was a lit­tle way in­land, on the west of To­co Bay. There was an­oth­er such mis­sion at Cumana."

To­co pro­duced an abun­dance of cot­ton

An­tho­ny said: "These ear­ly French set­tlers (num­ber­ing about 28) could not have found soil suit­able for sug­ar-cane. An in­ven­to­ry of 1797 showed there was just one sug­ar-mill in the dis­trict. There were as many as 59 cot­ton mills. The labour force num­bered 158 slaves and 62 free blacks. Amerindi­ans were list­ed as to­talling 155 at the time. "They turned the vil­lage in­to a de­pot of pro­duce. But it was ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to get it out of this in­ac­ces­si­ble place. Gov­er­nor Ralph Wooford start­ed the round-is­land steam­er ser­vice in 1818. To­co re­ceived great pri­or­i­ty. "As a re­sult, To­co pros­pered not on­ly be­cause of fre­quent com­mu­ni­ca­tion with To­ba­go, through the steam­er ser­vice." To­co achieved parish sta­tus in 1930. An­tho­ny added: "It was no sur­prise from the Catholic Church. A new church ded­i­cat­ed to Our La­dy of the As­sump­tion was re­built at Mis­sion Vil­lage, just where the Ca­puchins had set up the first church." Sum­ming up sen­ti­ments, An­tho­ny not­ed "One re­mains with the im­pres­sion To­co is still vi­brant and ex­cit­ing."

About Michael An­tho­ny

He was born in Ma­yaro on Feb­ru­ary 10, 1930 and at­tend­ed the Ma­yaro RC School. He of­ten tells, of how the Ma­yaro land­scape, lat­er pro­vid­ed much in­spi­ra­tion for his books. Be­ing born in such a beau­ti­ful place he says has al­ways giv­en him thoughts of be­ing a writer in or­der to de­scribe it. This is a task he feels he is yet to ac­com­plish. Nalis (the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad and To­ba­go) was kind to him in 2003 to in­stall, un­der their aus­pices, a full col­lec­tion of his work in the Nalis li­brary at Pier­re­ville, Ma­yaro, and they even in­dulged him in 2005 when they pur­chased some of his lat­er pa­pers, be­ing housed at their head­quar­ters li­brary in Port-of-Spain. (Some of his ear­li­er pa­pers had been ac­quired by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at St Au­gus­tine in 2003). An­tho­ny has writ­ten books of Fic­tion in­clud­ing The Games Were Com­ing and The Year in San Fer­nan­do Oth­er his­tor­i­cal pieces were Glimpses of Trinidad and To­ba­go, He­roes of the Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Port-of-Spain in A World at War and A Bet­ter and Brighter Day.

He ded­i­cat­ed Towns and Vil­lages to his grand­son Julien Michael An­tho­ny. An ex­cerpt from an ar­ti­cle (Ju­ly 28, 2000) from ge­neal­o­gist Shamshu Deen said: "He was close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Coun­cil start­ed by the late Prime Min­is­ter, Er­ic Williams in 1971, and su­per­vised by the not­ed Dr JD el­der. And de­spite his tremen­dous suc­cess eg, the Arts Coun­cil of Great Britain 1967 fel­low­ship, and the con­tri­bu­tion giv­en by this sim­ple but gi­ant of a man to T&T, he re­mains com­mit­ted to his coun­try with a pas­sion to serve. "He al­ways has time to glance up from his deep re­search, as he did last week, to as­sist and ad­vise a young re­searcher try­ing to dis­en­tan­gle some in­tri­cate dilem­ma in her UWI the­sis."