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Whaling in the Bocas
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, September 22, 2013Copperhole on Monos Island in 1910. Once a whaling station, it was later a popular holiday spot for wealthy families from Port-of-Spain.Whaling, the...
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Exploring the Trinidad-Venezuela connection Part 2: TO WIN A WAR
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, October 6, 2013Santiago Marino (1788-1854) in his military uniform.Almost every schoolchild in Venezuela, the Bolivarian Republic, according to the late president Hugo...
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Exploring the Trinidad-Venezuela connection Part 3: VACAS Y PRESIDENTES
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, October 13, 2013Antonio Guzman Blanco (1829-99), the autocratic Venezuelan president in the late 1800s whose persecution of political rivals drove thousands of his people...
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Angelo BissessarsinghMonday, October 14, 2013On October 21, voters will go to the polls to select their representatives for the various regional corporations in the local government elections. The...
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Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, October 13, 2013In Pasea South, Tunapuna, last Wednesday, workers busily worked to repair the rough, uneven and pot-hole covered road, used by Carmini Ramroop and her...
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From sleepy village to commercial hub
Angelo BissessarsinghTuesday, October 15, 2013Two labourers cutting cane near Chaguanas in the 1800s.Chaguanas in the past few decades has grown from being a sleepy village set amidst sprawling...
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A brief history of local government
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, October 20, 20131880s map showing the counties of Trinidad. Local government in T&T is a vague and sketchy concept, eclipsed by blaring music trucks and much heated...
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Legend of the La Diablesse
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, October 27, 2013La Diablesse—Oil painting by Rudolph Bissessarsingh (2013)In the rich pantheon of local folkore, it is the fusion of French and West-African identities...
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Felicity—first to pioneer festival
Angelo BissessarsinghSaturday, November 2, 2013Dancer Susan Mohip poses near a display of deyas at the Divali Nagar, Chaguanas. PhotoS: EDISON BOODOOSINGHIn this the final instalment of this series, we...
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The festival of the dead
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, November 3, 2013The diverse potpourri of our culture means that even a staid and solemn occasion like the observance of All Saints’ Day or All Hallows Eve cannot remain...
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Trinidad’s concentration camp
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, November 10, 2013The popular pharmacy of Alex Laing on the corner of Queen and Frederick Streets (seen here in 1904) was seized and liquidated in 1914 under the Enemy...
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The Caroni River
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, November 17, 2013A corial or dugout canoe on the Caroni River circa 1920.Caroni is Amerindian in origin (there is another river bearing the same name in Venezuela) and the...
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Trinidad’s bad roads
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, November 24, 2013A 19th century sketch of a horse and buggy being guided across an unbridged river.Trinidad is the home of the world famous Pitch Lake, which has provided...
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The Maraval Reservoir
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, December 1, 2013Workers skimming impediments out of the reservoir’s catchments circa 1920.In 1854 a cholera epidemic struck Trinidad which left thousands of Trinidadians...
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The Bonanza
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, December 15, 2013The ornate façade of the Bonanza store on Frederick Street (1897).The shopping mall craze which began in the late 1970s in the final golden years of the...
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A princess’s gift to a soldier
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, December 22, 2013One of the 1914 Christmas tins showing the embossing and image of Princess Mary on the lid—from the Angelo Bissessarsingh Collection.Christmas is a time...
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San Fernando Regatta
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, December 29, 2013For nearly a century, the premiere event on San Fernando’s social calendar was the New Year’s Day Regatta at King’s Wharf.
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PART 1: Cocoa: Worth its weight in silver
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, January 5, 2014Cocoa seems to have been introduced in Trinidad in the 17th century, since it was one of the few cash crops cultivated for export by the Spanish settlers. It...
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Jackson scores with Smaug
Angelo BissessarsinghWednesday, January 8, 2014Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel, in a scene from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. AP PhotosIf I had any purpose in life in 2013, it was...
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Trinidad Cocoa Part II Cocoa Panyols and Cadbury
Angelo BissessarsinghSunday, January 12, 2014Hundreds of peons from neighbouring Venezuela came to Trinidad as seasonal workers. An ethnic mixture of Amerindian, African and European, they were known...
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