THINGS THAT MATTER – The beautiful stamps that tell our story

“Our stamp issues celebrate the people, events and cultural milestones that helped to shape the unique Barbadian experience, and tell the story of our shared heritage.” 

(Margaret Ashby, Postmaster General)

 

As a child of the post office, I was thrilled by the splendid 50th Anniversary of Independence Exhibition mounted at the General Post Office by the Barbados Postal Service. Everyone should make a trip into architect Mervyn Awon’s magnificent Post Office Building to see this illuminating display, which showcases and celebrates almost every important event, cultural milestone and major achievement of the past 50 years. 

 

At the opening on Monday morning, the Postmaster General gave a brief history of the post office, beginning 350 years ago with the Imperial Packet Agency, established by the order of King Charles II in 1663. A local or so-called Inland Post Office came into being in Bridgetown in 1852 – triggered by the fact that Trinidad had just created their local office, and Barbados was not to be outdone! And with it came ten district post offices in the other parishes. The history of our post offices is recorded in fascinating detail in the magnum opus of our own philatelic guru  Edmund Bayley: “The History of the Post Offices in Barbados”, published in 2009.

 

I was raised as a child of the post office because my mother, Lorraine Fraser, was appointed postmistress of St. John (District number 5 in the island) on April 1, 1941. It wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke, although the salary was a paltry seven pounds a month, or a little more than a dollar a day! But it allowed her to move from Speightstown, where she was postmistress of St. Peter at the enormous salary of seven pounds, eighteen shillings a month ... and it allowed my parents to live together in St. John, because he had been commuting from Lemon Arbour Factory to Speightstown once or twice a week for the first two years of their marriage!

 

My mother’s post office was twenty yards away from the front door of our rented home at Spooners, in St. John, while our father’s parochial treasury office was in the corner of the house! The whole parish converged on our home every day – it was like a VERY large extended family … 

 

She opened up the office at 7:30 in the morning, and for three hours every day, between mail deliveries, that is from about 10 a.m. until 1 pm, we received home schooling. Reading and arithmetic began at age four, and by eight I was devouring Stephenson and Scott novels, and poems by Longfellow. And, of course, I began a philatelic passion, which ended at 18, going off to University. When I returned my entire collection had been consumed by termites. I almost wept, and I learned “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt …”

 

But back to this wonderful exhibition. On one side of the public area of the GPO is a display of post office memorabilia, including old typewriters, ancient parcel scales and letter scales, and artefacts of all kinds. At the other end are display cabinets with the hundreds of stamps – more than 200 issues – produced over the 50 years since 1966. It is an extraordinary array of themes, of people, places, achievements and acclaim, in a beautiful range of colourful and artistic designs. 

 

There are regular definitive issues every few years, with a full range of values, using a popular, colourful theme – for example Birds in 1979 and Marine life in 1985. Other themed issues have included Barbados Flowers, Vintage cars, Gardens of Barbados, Windmills of Barbados, Barbados Festivals, The Landship, and even Lizards! There have been important anniversary issues…the 100th Anniversary of PAHO, the 35th Anniversary of Independence, the 375th Anniversary of the First Settlement, the 375th Anniversary of the Settlement of Bridgetown, the 375th Anniversary of Parliament, the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade from Africa, Cave Hill at 50, and the 100th Anniversary of the Panama Canal. 

 

As a member of the Philatelic Advisory Committee I have enjoyed the lively debates we have, choosing the themes, and the issue I have most enjoyed and admired was The Seven Wonders of Barbados, released on February 21, 2014. The seven wonders selected were Cove Bay, the Music Rocks at Bathsheba, the Lion at Gun Hill, the Dry Dock, St. Nicholas Abbey, Morgan Lewis Windmill and Harrison’s Cave. And the brochure issued with them illustrated two others – Culpepper Island and Chalky Mount. The brochures accompanying each issue are well researched by staff of the Philatelic Bureau and are a treasure trove of information. 

 

The exhibition is open for the next few weeks but visit it SOON and enjoy a fabulous, living history lesson. As Ms. Ashby said, our beautiful stamps are an eloquent flagship for tourism, attracting many visitors, and with great potential for an even greater role. Congratulations, Margaret and your team.

 

Professor Fraser is past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine. Website:  profhenryfraser.com