Changing times

The culture that was once present in Barbados, which all of the older generation Barbadians are so proud of, one of caring and sharing – unfortunately no longer exists today.

 

This was the sentiment that was expressed by Centenarian, Canon Ivor Jones who spoke with the media recently as he celebrated his birthday.

 

When asked to state what life was like growing up as a boy and then later on as a young man, he said that was a time when persons looked out for each other.

 

“All I can say is this; we lived in an age where people shared what they had with other people. It was a lovely age. If you had pumpkins and I didn’t have any, you would get some for me. If you had 

cucumbers and I didn’t have any, you would get some for me.”

 

He expressed his disappointment at how the times have changed, something he has observed in watching the news.

 

“Nowadays you are getting young people shooting one another, so day after day you hear about somebody being shot. So it is a different age altogether. That is nothing like the age that I grew up in because I ain’t know about any shooting until this season when you hear about this person shooting somebody and so on. We didn’t have that in our time. We had nothing like that in our time.”  

 

As for reaching this golden age, he expressed pleasure at reaching this milestone stating that many of his friends passed away in their 90’s so he is grateful to reach this age. Not revealing the 

secrets to his longevity, he stated that he is just pleased to be reaching this age since it was something that he always wanted.

 

Born in Holy Innocents, St. Thomas, his father was the Headmaster of the Holy Innocents Boys’ School while his mother was a teacher in the same school, making education an important part of his childhood.

 

Religion was another essential element of his childhood as his parents would take him to church every Sunday. In fact, it was in attending these services and hearing the priest preach that challenged him to get into ministry work himself.

 

“They used to take me to the church every Sunday and I used to listen to the preachers and I used to say to myself ‘man, I can preach better than that. I feel I can do better than that’ and that is how I got into the ministry of preaching and then I told them that I have preached in every Anglican church in this island of Barbados. There is not a church that is Anglican in this island of Barbados where Ivor Jones did not preach in the pulpit there. So I preached in hundreds of sermons. I preached sermons for at least 75 years and that is a lot of years to be able to preach."