JULIEN MAISONNEUVE
Part I
Section 2
October 4, 2000
Page 4
There
is no absolute certainty that Julien Maisonneuve lived into the
new century, although everything points in that direction. He would have been in his 60s when the 20th
century opened, and he was healthy and active.
However,
it is the records that speak, and the date of his death cannot be easily
ascertained. The very reliable burial
records of the San Fernando Borough Council of that era do not show his death,
which suggests he died outside the borough.
Maisonneuve
was always in the news in San Fernando, for this town was the centre of his
activities. But in a period when it was
very difficult to get from place to place, Maisonneuve seems to have got around
without difficulty. The last one read
of him must have been in The San Fernando Gazette of 1894, and in fact that was
the last year of The San Fernando Gazette, for the editor of the newspaper died
and the newspaper never re-appeared.
This was when one lost track of Maisonneuve who "paved the
way", as will be seen, and because he is unknown and unsung, the tribute
is well deserved.
Maisonneuve
was a person of many interests: he was preoccupied with the opening up of the
eastern areas, with giving a on the destruction of parasol ants, with the
production of certain crops under special circumstances; with land matters,
with streets and roads - and especially with the way to handle streets and
roads.
We
first come to know Maisonneuve, a man of humble background, in no other place
than the chambers of the Borough Council of San Fernando. The period was the mid-1860s. He had a store on High Street and on the
strength of this he seems to have won a seat on the Borough Council by rallying
some of the merchants around him, and through them, influencing the burgesses,
most of whom were expatriates. He
appears to have been the first African to sit around the Council table.
However,
he did not last too long on the Borough Council because he was forthright, and
also he had no intention of being subservient.
After a clash of worlds in 1869 he was disqualified from the Borough
Council for "insubordination."
Just
before this incident, Maisonneuve, who was very concerned about the progress of
the African in the society went to the 30th anniversary celebrations
of the abolition of slavery at St John's Baptist church at Victoria
Village. The date was July 16, 1868,
and on the occasion, moving his audience with fiery eloquence, he declared,
"This is a day that should be held in lasting remembrance. It should be held dear by anyone having a
single drop of African blood running through his veins." He called on the African community to shake
themselves from the dust and show themselves worthy to be free. But we would have hardly known of Julien
Maisonneuve, let alone aid tribute to him, were it for this alone. W would hardly have known of him had it not
been for an obsession of his and what resulted from it. In a period when all the roads in San
Fernando and elsewhere were either bare or covered with the new road material
macadam, Maisonneuve, who lived on Broadway, was convinced that the best
all-weather covering for roads was asphalt or pitch. He continually tried to interest the mayor and other members of
the Borough Council in trying it out but at first they were amused and after
his insistence they began to think he was mad.
He had
a pitch factory on Broadway in which he refined pitch in the hope that one day
the Borough Council of San Fernando would see reason.
On
several occasions after experimenting and alighting on a more refined grade of
pitch he would inform the Borough Council.
No
doubt there were certain borough councilors who thought Maisonneuve was merely
seeking to make money, but nothing was further from the truth. The reason for the objection of some of the
councilors was the opinion that horses and mules would ever be able to walk on
such a surface. (Of course motor
traffic was not to come in before the end of the century).
Maisonneuve
persisted, and he did not only think of pitch as a road covering, but he
experimented with it as a fuel, and claimed success.
By Michael Anthony
October 11, 2000
Page 42
Maisonneuve
persuaded a few estate managers to try using pitch as a fuel, and at once a
number of them came under his influence.
The first estate to try pitch as a fuel was Plein Palais, an area now
part of he oil refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre. The manager of Plein Palais sugar
estate made great claims for the efficiency of his boilers using the fuel.
Maisonneuve,
who lived at the corner of Broadway and Harris Promenade, never spared an
opportunity of passing on the message of what could be done with pitch. In that period fevers were very prevalent,
especially in the rainy season, and the rainy season of 1880 was one of the
worst of the time. San Fernando was
devastated by heavy rains and what followed those rains was an outbreak of
fevers of all kinds.
Maisonneuve
made the announcement that pitch was a health-giver. He announced that apart from the fact that pitch was an efficient
fuel; it drove away all kinds of fevers with its fumes. At this time he wrote to the little San
Fernando newspaper, The San Fernando Gazette: “You may think I am
going too far but since they began burning pitch at Plein Palais a most
wonderful thing has happened. The
little hospital is now empty. The place
has become healthy and free from disease.”
He seemed to have succeeded in encouraging a number of estate managers
to burn the pitch as a fuel.
But
Maisonneuve’s principal dream was to see pitch on the roads. The Borough Council lost a lot of money in
the rainy season, for the terrain being hilly, whenever it rained the torrents
swept the gravel and macadam off the streets, causing the Borough Council to do
the same work again. He could not
understand how his constant appeals to the Borough Council to try paving the
roads with pitch could be rejected, especially taking into consideration that
it was almost impossible to move about the streets when it rained.
He
also thought of the plight of the townsfolk when it was dry, because under the
hot sun clouds of dust rose up, not only from the earthen streets, but even
worse from the streets covered with macadam.
Indeed,
he always saw High Street as a typical example of this problem. In the hot dry season shops had to close
their doors to keep out the red dust storms. Despite the fact tat his proposals
were usually rejected by the Borough Council he was always offering to pave a
stretch of road free of charge. On one
occasion he must have taken their silence for consent and he went ahead and
paved part of steep Johnstone Street during a season of heavy rainfall. For this he was brought before the Borough
Council and given a severe warning.
But
for all this, despite his bad reputation of interfering with the roadways,
Maisonneuve was known in San Fernando as a man of ideas and as a resourceful,
hard-working man. And he was always out
and about, making compounds of insecticides and supplying to country farmers,
and at one time he developed a special method of destroying bachacs, pests
which were harassing the eastern areas.
The
Borough Council was forced to seek him out in 1883, when their superintendent
of streets resigned in a particularly difficult period of bad weather. Maisonneuve was offered the important job of
superintendent of streets – once he kept them free of asphalt.
Section 2
October 18, 2000
Page 4
When the superintendent of streets resigned in a particularly difficult period of bad weather, Maisonneuve was offered the important job of superintendent of streets.
It was
then he understood why the former superintendent had resigned. Maisonneuve experienced a great deal of
difficulty because this was the time when many new streets of San Fernando were
being made and the Borough Council had to deal with certain landowners, like Le
Gendre, Fonrose, and Bertrand, to be able to cut streets through their land.
During
the tough negotiations it was Maisonneuve who felt the brunt of their hostility,
and if the problems were with the landowners alone it would have been
bearable. The fact was that the Borough
Council also made life difficult for him, accusing him of creating problems.
Maisonneuve,
although at times outspoken, was patient and courteous, and withstood the
pressure, hoping that in the end they would allow him to pave the streets with
pitch.
Yet
he had strong political feelings and on this he made no compromise. In 1887, as San Fernando was preparing to
celebrate the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria, Maisonneuve was part of a group
who planned to petition the queen to ask her if she could see her way to let
the people of Trinidad choose their own representatives.
Their
contention was that the men the queen appointed to do that job made a mess of
things because it wax not their land, and the people of Trinidad wanted the
right to choose their own men who were suitable for the job. Needless to say this infuriated the Borough
Council, led, as it was then, by Britishers.
In 1888, Maisonneuve was seen collecting signatures for the petition and
he was summarily sacked.
(The
petition, incidentally, went through to Queen Victoria, who requested the
Governor, William Robinson, to set up a royal commission to find out if it was
true that the people of Trinidad wanted their own representatives. That was the start of what could e called “the
road to Independence”.)
However,
Maisonneuve, sacked, was now free to continue experimenting with pitch. He maintained a good relationship with the
Borough Council, and when in the 1890s pitch was beginning to be used in the
outside world as a road covering, how could they help but think of him?
Some
of the very councillors, who had gone to Europe, came back home with the news,
only that they could not mention Maisonneuve when speaking of it. In time the Borough Council had to face up
to it, for a great deal of money was being spent on gravel. So the new superintendent of streets,
Washington Van Buren, was instructed to make enquiries.
Van
Buren made enquiries and a letter on record in the Borough Council shows that
the very method Maisonneuve was using to prepare the pitch for use on roads –
and using for more than a decade – was being used abroad, only that the equipment
to prepare it was more sophisticated.
Van
Buren asked the Council to send away for this equipment, called a pitch kettle,
but when it came he did not know how to use it.
Maisonneuve,
through his spies, knew what had gone on and that the Borough Council had a
pitch kettle, so he wrote asking them to lend it to him. There is no record of how embarrassed were
the faces round the table, neither is there a record as to whether the pitch kettle
was loaned, but it is known that pitch was tried.
It is
not certain which were the first streets paved in San Fernando because The
San Fernando Gazette, which mentioned most things of that nature, fell
silent in 1894, when its editor-proprietor died. But it could not have been long afterwards because the new
century seems to have found High Street paved.
If indeed Julien Maisonneuve was alive, and it is expected he would have been very much so, then he must have felt like the man of the new century, because even though he might not have got the job, his thoughts and ideas were completely vindicated.
It could
also be seen that if the San Fernando Borough Council had heeded Maisonneuve as
far back as the 1860s, the little southern town, today a city, might have been
the first in the world to pave its streets with pitch.