In August 2011, I travelled to Lancaster, England, along with my daughter and wife, for a two week sojourn. My purpose was twofold. My daughter had enrolled as part of an exchange program, at the Lancaster University where she expected to complete her third year of an Honour’s Degree program at the Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
We had travelled to England on two previous occasions and my daughter, then an English and History major, had fallen in love with the English landscape. However, I had a secondary reason for the visit besides a reconnaissance mission to see the influences, good, bad or ugly, which my daughter would be exposed to, during the school year which she planned to spend at Lancaster University.
I wanted to troll the northern English countryside, redolent of manicured greenery, old stone fences, quaint coffee shops and old markets. I wanted a close encounter with a few car boot sales and other collectables which I may see in quaint towns or villages. Most of all, I wanted to browse for endless hours in used book stores, foraging for books on law, history or cricket, which glory days had long gone.
A few days after our arrival in England, after my family and I had snacked on an English breakfast and following successive days of generous servings of Haddock and chips, we were picked up by my cousin, Leon and his wife, Pauline, who had generously driven a considerable distance for a tour of northern England. As we drove along well paved but narrow streets, past verdant pastures and quaint farmhouses, and after thinking of a thousand ways to discreetly ask my cousin if he would be kind enough to be gentle on the car’s accelerator, given that I did not relish the thought of going gently into that good night, Leon spoke about his plans to write a novel based on the life of his late father, who was one of my mother’s younger brothers. His reason for advising me stemmed from the fact that I maintained an abiding interest in history and had indeed, written a biography of the late Edward Oliver LeBlanc, one of our family’s most illustrious members, who had been the first Premier of the former British colony of Dominica. I was immediately interested about his plans, given that the life and experiences of my mother’s siblings who had migrated to England in the 1950s, were still very much of a mystery.
As Leon outlined his plans, I became more interested, and advised him that not only would it be important to write about his father’s personal odyssey but also that he was in a unique position to write it. My only concern, which remained unexpressed, was whether the IT specialist which he was, could muster the creative energy to write about his chosen topic in a manner which would appeal to a broad cross-section of the reading public.
Upon reading this wonderful work, I am happy to declare that my fears were unfounded. Leon has deployed a lyricism which I did not know he possessed in writing the story of his father, whose story will resonate in the minds of all those who have had to seek a life in the diaspora. At times lyrical, at times poignant, and without any exaggerated sentimentalism, Leon has provided a riveting account of a man who was the embodiment of every man, whether Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who has struggled for self-actualization in an environment which, in simple parlance, doesn’t appear to give a damn. Tio, the hero of the book, came to England with plans to return to Dominica after a few years.
A few years extended to over half a century and a lifetime of experiences that have been crystallized in his son’s novel. Leon’s book, or Tio’s story, will soon occupy, when I receive a copy, pride of place in my library, alongside copies of well-thumbed books such as Beyond a Boundary and Rumpole of the Bailey.
Justice Irving André