The fol­low­ing is a trib­ute to ed­u­ca­tor and po­et Claire Kath­leen Har­ris, sis­ter of Arch­bish­op Emer­i­tus Joseph Har­ris, who died in Feb­ru­ary in Cana­da af­ter a long ill­ness. A memo­r­i­al ser­vice will take place in Port-of-Spain at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege on Ju­ly 15.

Peace­ful­ly, af­ter a lengthy ill­ness, Claire Kath­leen Har­ris left us on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2018. Pre­de­ceased by her par­ents, Con­rad Knowl­ton (1965) and Gladys Car­di­nal (1978), and by broth­er Lennox (2017), she is sur­vived by sib­lings Con­rad (Lot­tie), Arch­bish­op Emer­i­tus Joseph Har­ris, Sr Clare Har­ris SJC (born Ann Lyn­d­say), Mar­garet, and her beloved sis­ter-in-law and care­giv­er, Ri­ta.

She is al­so sur­vived by nieces and nephews Tracey (Joseph), Wendy (Phillip), Derek (Jody), Kim­ber­ley (Matthew), Lau­relle (Mar­tin), and Az­izi; great-nieces and great-nephews Kei­then, Devin, Syd­ney, Alexan­der, Cheyenne, Skyler, Ben­jamin, Rhys, James, and Alivia; cousins George, Mar­guerite (de­ceased) Pe­ter, Ger­ard and Mary-Ann Richards, the Har­ris cousins, Yeoland Moolchan and fam­i­ly. She will al­so be missed by friends Gret­ta Tay­lor, Rose­marie Mei­dinger, Nourbese Phillip, and Dionne Brand.

Born in 1937 as the sec­ond el­dest of six, Claire taught Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture at St Joseph’s Con­vent School in St Joseph from 1956 to 1958 be­fore de­part­ing for Ire­land. She earned a BA Ho­n­ours (Eng­lish) from Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Dublin, in 1961 and a post-grad­u­ate diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Ja­maica in 1963. She re­turned home to Trinidad to teach again at her al­ma mater, St Joseph’s Con­vent School in Port-of-Spain, as well as the Catholic Women’s Teach­ers’ Train­ing Col­lege from 1962 to 1966.

Af­ter em­i­grat­ing to Cana­da in 1966, she taught Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and Dra­ma to mid­dle school stu­dents in the sep­a­rate Catholic school sys­tem in Cal­gary. Ded­i­cat­ed to the ed­u­ca­tion of young minds, she loved her work and con­tin­ued to teach un­til her re­tire­ment in 1994.

Claire took a ten-month leave of ab­sence to read for Mass Me­dia and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of La­gos, Nige­ria, in 1975, and it was in there that she be­gan to write po­et­ry. She pub­lished sev­en works: Fa­bles from the Women's Quar­ters (1984), Trans­la­tion in­to Fic­tion (1984), Trav­el­ling to Find a Rem­e­dy (1986), The Con­cep­tion of Win­ter (1989), Draw­ing Down a Daugh­ter (1992), Dipped in Shad­ow (1996), and She (2000). Her work has been trans­lat­ed in­to sev­er­al lan­guages, in­clud­ing Ger­man and Hin­di, and is con­sid­ered one of the fore­most con­trib­u­tors to Black Cana­di­an Lit­er­a­ture.

Claire won nu­mer­ous awards for her po­et­ry, in­clud­ing the Com­mon­wealth Award for Po­et­ry for the Amer­i­c­as Re­gion (1985), the Writ­ers' Guild of Al­ber­ta Award for po­et­ry (1987), the Al­ber­ta Cul­ture po­et­ry prize (1988), and the Al­ber­ta Cul­ture Spe­cial Award (1990). She was a fi­nal­ist for the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of Cana­da’s Award for Lit­er­a­ture (Draw­ing Down a Daugh­ter).

Com­mit­ted to so­cial jus­tice and to her art

Claire read and lec­tured around the world, in­clud­ing In­dia, Brazil, Ger­many, through­out the Caribbean, Cana­da, and the US, most no­tably at the Unit­ed States Li­brary of Con­gress. Her works ap­pear in count­less an­tholo­gies in­clud­ing the Pen­guin Book of Caribbean Verse, The Great Black North: Con­tem­po­rary African Cana­di­an Po­et­ry, and Gram­mar of Dis­sent: Po­et­ry and Prose of Claire Har­ris, M Nourbese Phillip and Dionne Brand.

Her work has formed the sub­ject mat­ter of aca­d­e­m­ic works, in­clud­ing at least two Ph D dis­ser­ta­tions. In 2009, she was in­duct­ed in­to the Hall of Ex­cel­lence at St Joseph’s Con­vent School in Port-of-Spain.

Claire will be re­mem­bered as one who dared to use pen and type­writer to com­bat in­jus­tice and to up­lift the mar­gin­al­ized. She was dri­ven by her com­mit­ment to so­cial jus­tice and to her art. Claire is re­mem­bered by her sib­lings as hav­ing a won­der­ful sense of hu­mour and an en­gag­ing mind; she was ad­mired by each of them even as they drew her in­to the most en­ter­tain­ing of po­lar­ized de­bates about cur­rent events.

Hav­ing cho­sen not to have chil­dren, she thrived as the cool, ec­cen­tric, well-trav­elled aunt who would al­ways take tele­phone calls in the mid­dle of the night. She passed on lessons about in­de­pen­dence, jus­tice, and how to thrive in a world too harsh in its colo­nial­ist treat­ment of racial­ized women and men. Most of all, Claire taught the next gen­er­a­tion how to ap­pre­ci­ate art, her cho­sen weapon of re­sis­tance to op­pres­sion.

She will be re­mem­bered by all who knew her as wry, loy­al; re­gal, with re­solve of steel; as a wan­der­ing spir­it and ad­ven­tur­er, a woman ut­ter­ly de­ter­mined to live life well. With­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion she was im­pas­sioned, bril­liant, and lov­ing be­yond mea­sure. She is and will al­ways be missed.

A memo­r­i­al mass led by Arch­bish­op Emer­i­tus Har­ris will be held at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Port-of-Spain on Sun­day, Ju­ly 15, 2018, at 9 am. Her ash­es will be in­terred in her moth­er’s grave at Par­adise Ceme­tery, San Fer­nan­do.

Rest in peace, Claire: “Death is not ex­tin­guish­ing the flame, it is putting out the light be­cause the dawn has come.” (Ra­bindranath Tagore).

As Claire would say, “End of sto­ry.”