Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Ch­aguara­mas Mil­i­tary His­to­ry and Avi­a­tion Mu­se­um (CMHAM) has un­til Fri­day to va­cate the premis­es it oc­cu­pies at West­ern Main Road, Care­nage Bay. In a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2024, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) with­drew its 30-year lease of­fer to the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, Lin­da Kelshall. She said the mu­se­um hous­es more than 500 years of his­to­ry.

The CDA said they made sev­er­al at­tempts to reg­u­larise CMHAM as a lessee, but in the last four years have not re­ceived a sub­stan­tive re­sponse from the pro­pri­etors who con­tin­ue to op­er­ate on the land with­out pay­ing rent.

CMHAM Vice Pres­i­dent Bri­an Mitchell said it was not the first time the CDA had tried to evict the mu­se­um. In 2013 the CDA of­fered them an al­ter­na­tive par­cel of land, but the ne­go­ti­a­tions broke down on the is­sue of pay­ing for the land.

“At the time, that fig­ure was around $20 mil­lion. It’s a piece of heav­i­ly forest­ed land, and it had to be cleared, pre­pared, built,” Mith­cell ex­plained.

Vol­un­teer Matthew Ali, 20, said he ded­i­cates his time to the mu­se­um be­cause he be­lieves in pre­serv­ing the past.

“A lot of peo­ple from my gen­er­a­tion, peo­ple un­der­es­ti­mate us, they think that we would agree with ex­pand­ing the amuse­ment park just next door; we would agree with it and just say oh that mu­se­um old, we don’t need that but this is our cul­ture, this is our her­itage,” he said.

PRO Kathy-Ann Ed­wards said the mu­se­um con­tin­ues to con­duct tours. “Just week­end gone, we had UWI stu­dents and a lot of young peo­ple. They come here be­cause they have home­work, and when they come in here, they are al­ways amazed of the his­to­ry,” she ex­plained.

With tears in her eyes, di­rec­tor Lin­da Kelshall said her last word to her late hus­band, Gay­lord Kelshall, who found­ed the mu­se­um, was that she would ful­fil his dream. She re­called that it start­ed in his small mu­se­um in Cot­ton Hill, and in 1991 the Min­istry of Plan­ning ap­proved a 30-year lease for the par­cel of land the mu­se­um cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pies.