Pat Bish­op was one of the most ver­sa­tile Caribbean women of our day. A cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go by birth, she was a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner from Bish­op Anstey High School. She pro­ceed­ed to King's Col­lege, Durham Uni­ver­si­ty, where she stud­ied Art. Up­on com­ple­tion of this de­gree, Bish­op re­turned to Trinidad where she taught art at her Al­ma Mater for a few years. Her rest­less spir­it, how­ev­er, led her to UWl, Mona cam­pus, where she sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived her mas­ter's in West In­di­an his­to­ry, her the­sis be­ing "Run­away Slaves in Ja­maica- 1807 to 1823."

Bish­op lec­tured his­to­ry at UWl-at both the Mona and St Au­gus­tine cam­pus­es-for some eight years. She was al­so a lec­tur­er in the his­to­ry of art and de­sign at the Ja­maica School of Art from 1970 to 1972. It was this com­bi­na­tion of study in both the arts and his­to­ry of the Caribbean that lat­er blos­somed in­to her deep in­ter­est in, and pi­o­neer­ing work with the steel­band move­ment in Trinidad. She fo­cused this in­ter­est with the WIT­CO Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra and as its con­duc­tor took the band on eight ma­jor USA tours in­clud­ing two ma­jor con­certs at Carnegie Mu­sic Hall.

She was the first to con­duct a com­bined steel­band and sym­pho­ny or­ches­tra, this be­ing the Des­per­a­does and the New York Pops Sym­pho­ny in mid-1980s. It is as the mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of The Ly­di­an Singers that Bish­op had been able to bring to au­di­ences in Trinidad and abroad her tal­ent as a mu­si­cian, pro­duc­ing first-class per­for­mances of the great clas­sics by Ver­di, Rossi­ni, Dvo­rak, and Beethoven. She has ex­hib­it­ed her work not on­ly in Trinidad, but al­so in Bar­ba­dos and Lon­don. Of in­ter­est, she ex­hib­it­ed 37 minia­tures, wood­en bas-re­liefs and ob­jects on the sub­ject of the "Jour­ney of the Ma­gi"-a se­ries on the pur­suit of dis­in­ter­est­ed wis­dom and its con­se­quences.

In 1994, Bish­op re­ceived the Trin­i­ty Cross, Trinidad and To­ba­go's high­est Na­tion­al Award for her con­tri­bu­tion in the field of art and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. When asked as to her fu­ture hopes, she replied, "that my coun­try­men may find their place in the sun...though that seems now, to be so re­mote as to be im­pos­si­ble.