IVY LAWRENCE MAYNIER
RESIDENT TUTOR
EXTRA MURAL
DEPARTMENT UWI
1958-1962
SUPER EDUCATOR
WITH A COMMON TOUCH
Excerpt from an obituary by
Lennox Bernard, Resident Tutor
School of Continuing Studies
Sunday Express
January 30, 2000
Pages 26 & 28
Ivy Lawrence was born in Montreal, Canada, of
Trinidadian parents. She graduated with
a Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University, majoring in French and
English. There, she was actively
involved in the Historical, French and Debating societies. She was the president of the Women's
Debating Union for three consecutive years and was the first woman student to
be awarded the McGill Debating key for inter-collegiate debating.
The award is traditionally reserved for male students and a
special exception was made to give the award to women for the first time in the
history of the University. In fact it
is recorded that the only other person in Trinidad and Tobago and possibly in
the West Indies to hold the coveted McGill Debating key is Dr. Winston Mahabir,
a former Minister of Government.
Ms. Lawrence went on to study law at the University of Toronto;
she obtained the LLB majoring in Public International Law in 1945 and was later
called to the Bar in England in 1947.
By 1948 she had completed a comparative survey of labour legislation in
the British West Indies, a study undertaken by the Colonial Development and
Welfare office.
In 1948, she came to Trinidad to practise law but by 1950 she had
returned to England with plans to specialise in labour law. However, she accepted an appointment with
the United States Information Service (USIS) in Paris where she worked for five
years as the Business Manager and Contracts Supervisor for the film service of
the USIS. Her involvement in adult
education began with community and welfare work with the United Bay Area
Crusade in San Francisco, US.
From the outset this noble lady impacted positively on her
advisory committee with members such as Henry Hudson Phillips, Dr. C. V.
Gocking, and C. R. Ottley and on the Trinidad and Tobago Government led by Dr.
Eric Williams. She was fully committed
to adult education. Special courses wee
organised to meet the needs of Friendly Societies, railway workers, police and
nurses as well as courses in evening class programmes in West Indian History,
Government, Political Science, Elementary Book Keeping, Office Management,
Practical Economics, Mercantile Law, International Trade and Finance. Programmes were mounted to assist students
who fell short of the entrance requirements of the new government Polytechnic
Institute.
In what she termed The New Design she devised syllabi to meet the
needs of labour unions, civil servants, persons engaged in the tourist
industry, farm labourers and co-operatives.
She developed a six-lecture unit series conducted on a lecture
discussion basis with the intent of bringing the University to people in the
urban and rural areas of Trinidad and Tobago.
A regular evening programme on the radio was linked with the six-lecture
unit series.
Ms. Lawrence went further by working with the West Indian Affairs
Study Group that had given increasing attention to the problem of the
inadequacy or unsuitability of textbooks for use by these groups. She developed a Small Paper series, which
covered a wide range of topics on the West Indies. Residential and non-residential courses were mounted in
collaboration with government and voluntary organisations in the fields of
drama, industrial relations, radio and social work. Training programmes in industry were geared to provide basic
skills in English Grammar, Spelling and Elementary Economics.
It is fortuitous that Ivy Lawrence was appointed during the period
of the West Indian Federation. It must
have pained her to witness its demise, having put so much effort in bringing
the federal principles to the ordinary citizen.
To me her most important achievement was the series of eleven
lectures sponsored by the Extra Mural Department in collaboration with the
Federal Office of Information. These
lectures were held at the Public Library from February 24, 1959 to April 6,
1959. A full attendance was sustained
throughout the series, which was opened by the Governor General, Lord
Hailes. It was no mean feat to attract
lecturers of the calibre of Prof. Henry Steele Commager, Dr. Gocking, the then
Messrs. S. Ramphal, H. O. B. Wooding, Ellis Clarke, Cecil Kelsick and Sir
Grantley Adams and chairmen of the stature of Hon. Mortimer Duke, Hon. E. Ward,
Hon. Phyllis Alfrey, Dr. Eric Williams and Dr. Patrick Solomon.
Ivy Lawrence moved with ease and panache among the upper class and
the intellectual elite of the country but she remained faithful as well to the
principles of adult education and related directly to the various dispossessed
groups and communities in the country.
She lectured on various themes including social legislation and worked
alongside other stalwarts Dr. D. Rapier, Dr. R. Barrow and June Dolly Benson on
refresher courses for social workers held at the former Imperial College of
Tropical Agriculture (ICTA).
Ms. Lawrence got married to Mr. Maynier, a career diplomat with
the Federal Government, and left for Jamaica in 1961 after the collapse of the
Federation. She was replaced by another
capable Trinidadian woman, Ms. Ruby Samlalsingh.
Mrs. Lawrence Maynier was a pioneer in other respects - she was
the first woman to be named an honorary member of the Mahaica Club in Point
Fortin which was dedicated to the cultural, social and athletic activities of
its members. She was the first graduate
of the University of Toronto to take honours in International Law and the first
woman to be invited by the Montreal and the Trinidad and Tobago branches of the
Rotary Club to address its members.
Ivy Lawrence Maynier exemplified all that was good and important
in an adult educator. She was
pragmatic, innovative, people-oriented, radical at times, string-willed and an
agent of social change. I grieve at the
fact that I never got th opportunity to meet her or to record her
"voice", but I will write about her all the same.
It is a pity that our university did so little to celebrate her
life and work - the message is clear to some of us. Adult education with its vocational and liberal thrust and mass
appeal has little respect and recognition in their hallowed halls of
learning. Ironically, Ivy Lawrence
Maynier and others before and after her have brought a lot of goodwill to the
university and have had a formative influence on who we are as a people - maybe
more than the main campus has ever done.