KEEPING TIME
WE CAN’T DO
WITHOUT IT
April 30, 2000
Page 40
The
people of Arima were lucky in their former mayors. Take Mayor
John Francis Wallen, for example. Out of the generosity of his heart, he bought
the Arima Dial with its clock and presented it to the town as a gift. It is not known whether punctuality was a
problem with Arimians but the clock definitely came in handy in helping people
get to work, school or church on time.
“It
was indeed a gift to the people of Arima and it didn’t cost them or the Borough
of Arima one cent,” revealed Arima resident Alfred Lala to Sunday Newsday.
Wallen bought the clock in 1898 while on a holiday tour of France. He saw the clock in a factory in the French city of Nice, liked it and decided to buy it as a present for the people of Arima.
The
Dial was put up in the same year in the centre of town and it has been there
ever since, until it was knocked over by a truck earlier this year. It is still to be restored.
According
to Lala, “The Dial is over 102 years old and is electrically operated.”
Lala
said Wallen was a well to do estate owner and community resident who owned a
lot of land in Arima and Arouca.
He
disclosed that The Dial has been in good working condition for a number of
years.
The
Dial isn’t the only famous TT clock with an interesting historical past.
The
Queen’s Royal College clock is another famous local landmark, which has an
imposing beauty about it.
The
clock was presented to the school on February 18, 1913 by William Gordon-Gordon
as a gift in memory f the English king at the time King Edward and his efforts
to maintain world peace.
Hence
the official name of it is the King Edward Memorial Clock.
It
was installed by a QRC old boy named Horsford under the supervision of HD Hahn.
The
formal installation of the clock was marked by a ceremony held upstairs in the
balcony facing the Savannah attended by the then Director of Public Works the
Hon A G Bell, the former Acting Principal H H Hancock and the former British
Governor-General Sir George Ruthven Le Hunte.
It’s
an eight-day Westminster full quarter chime clock with an automated barring off
mechanism to stop the chimes at the appropriate time. Though 87 years old, it is still in good working condition.
Another
outstanding Port of Spain clock is the one at the Trinity Cathedral, which was
given to the church as a gift by the British colonial government on Sunday
April 27, 1930.
It
was set in motion by the English governor at the time Sir Alfred Claud Hollis.
The
clock’s Westminster eight-bell chime system was also given to the church as a
gift by another Englishman Captain G Russell of the SS Bienvenido.
The
eight-bell chime system was also a memorial, which he gave to the church in
commemoration of his late wife Violet Marion Russell.
The
cathedral’s sacristan, Rupert Regis, said the clock isn’t working at present
because a part in it is broken.
“The
clock really needs some overhauling and a member of the congregation is trying
to source where we can get replacement parts to get it working again,” he said.
Mount
St Benedict, that picturesque religious institution nestled in the northern
range also has a splendid clock.
According
to one of the priests, Father Benedict, the clock has been there since 1947 and
works electronically.
He
told Sunday Newsday that the clock contains four big batteries with
integrated circuits.
He also said there is an oscillator, which gives the clock dials an electric shock or pulse every half a minute thus advancing the big minute hand by half a minute.
In
San Fernando, there are three prominent clocks namely the Library Corner clock,
the Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church clock on Harris Promenade and
the San Fernando City Hall time piece.
The
one at Library Corner was donated to the city by the local Chinese community in
1966 under the leadership of Carlton Mack and was presented to the late mayor
of San Fernando, Doveton Sullivan.
However,
the clock broke down in 1980 and it did not work until the year 1988 when
another benefactor named Seeram Kalliecharan decided to assist his community.
In
that year, San Fernando achieved city status and, consequently, Kalliecharan
decided to fix the clock as his personal contribution towards the new city.
He
brought down a foreigner to repair it and he did so but two years later it
stopped working again. It’s still not
working to this day.
The
second well-known San Fernando clock is the one in the Lady of Perpetual Help
Roman Catholic Church on Harris Promenade.
It is one of the largest clocks in TT measuring eight feet in
diameter. It has been in the church
since the building was constructed in the 1950s. Alas, it isn’t working.
The third conspicuous San Fernandian clock is the one at San Fernando
City Hall, which has been there since the 1930s.
Other
prominent TT clocks are located at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the
Industrial Court and the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) building in
Scarborough.
The
clock in the Industrial Court is the most recently built of the big public
clocks in the country.
April 30, 2000
Page 41
He
symbolises an era now gone in Trinidad and Tobago. It was a time when this country prided itself on producing highly
skilled artisans who could hold their own with any worldwide.
Camera-shy
Victor Vivian Gormandy, 89, was the man hired to fix and maintain some of TT’s
historical landmarks such as the clocks at Queen’s Royal College, Trinity
Cathedral and the Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, San Fernando.
He
also has the distinction of managing one of the largest vulcanizing shops in
the world at Maracaibo, Venezuela, because he was recognised by many to be an
expert engineer and craftsman.
“I
worked there for years,” he told Sunday Newsday.
Today
he lives in Woodbrook and was happy to talk over old times.
Keeping
clocks ticking, he said, involved a lot of mental and physical work for, to do
it properly, he had to have a keen sense of engineering, a knack for repairing
machinery, dexterity with tools and bodily strength to manually turn the heavy
handles connected to the clock pulleys.
“You
had to be strong to turn handles of the Queen’s Royal and Trinity Cathedral
clocks. The work wasn’t strenuous for
me because I was very strong at the time.”
He
said he didn’t work on the clock at St Mary’s College because the priests used
to do it themselves.
He
told Sunday Newsday that he learnt his trade in his father’s machine shop in
Port of Spain.
“I
started working at the age of 13 in my father’s business and I worked there for
54 years.”
“My
father and I also did engineering work for the Port of Spain Gazette and
another daily newspaper.”
He
ended up becoming the proprietor of the enterprise, which his son runs at
present.
The
family business is called Gormandy’s Engineering Works.
Gormandy
said that his father was a printing engineer who gave lessons to budding
artisans at the then Royal Victoria Printing Institute.
Gormandy
related that he never went to any engineering school but he learnt all of his
artisan skills at his father’s machine shop.
His
proficiency put him in demand to repair clocks and once they were repaired they
ran for four to five years before they needed any more work on them. He said Gormandy’s was contracted to repair
and maintain the clocks and whenever the clocks broke down, his father sent for
him and another apprentice to examine them and once that was done, they would
return to him and tell him what was the problem and he’d tell them how to fix
it.
Gormandy
and his assistant, the late Kenwyn Samuel, practised for 25 years as master
craftsman.
“In
the latter years, Samuel and I were the experts in repairing the clocks because
there wasn’t anyone else to do it.”
“We
were the only two people in TT who could’ve repaired them.”
Gormandy
disclosed that the clocks worked by pulleys and weights and they broke down
whenever the pulleys went out of alignment thus requiring them to be shifted
back into their proper alignment.
“Sometimes
we had to make new pulleys, bearings and links in the machine shop in order to
repair the clocks whenever they went bad.”
“In
the machine shop we did clock repairs, car repairs and everything pertaining to
engineering work.”
Gormandy
said that he was paid for his professional services on the clocks according to
the type of job, which needed to be done.
“For
minor jobs, I got $1,000 and other times $4,800.”
Gormandy
said he also repaired the Lady of Perpetual Help RC, San Fernando and converted
it from the old system of winding it manually to the modern electrical system.
Furthermore,
he worked once on the Immaculate Conception clock but he gave it up because it
was too dangerous for him.
He
had to climb and walk on narrow banisters high above the ground to get to the
clock and if he fell off he would have struck iron beams below thus meeting his
end.
He
revealed that the QRC clock had to give the same time at all times from any
direction.
“Everybody
in St Clair lived in those days by the chiming of the clock.”
Gormandy
worked with some of the big oil companies operating in TT at the time like
Shell and Texaco building oil tanks.
He
also worked extensively throughout the Caribbean islands doing engineering
work.
The
former artisan stated to Sunday Newsday that he had to stop working
because of ill health.
Not only was Gormandy a proficient tradesman but he was also a fearsome wrestler in his day.
“I
used to wrestle in mud at the Kojo River in San Juan and I was a champion
fighter because I never lost a fight. I
always beat my opponents.”
He
said that he taught his four sons how to wrestle so that they could defend
themselves on the streets.
“Wrestling
was a nice game in my day and I used to love it but I don’t like it anymore
because it’s now become too cruel.”
Gormandy
lamented the lack of trade schools in TT today and he thinks this situation has
to be dealt with urgently.
“There’s
a shortage of skilled artisans in the country and we are going to have a crisis
if something isn’t done about the situation.”
He
added that the old tradesmen are dying and the young artisans aren’t being
given the opportunity to learn from them.
“They
aren’t learning the trades properly so they’re not getting as skilled as the
older ones were.”
Gormandy
was a former board member at the John Donaldson Technical institute, Wrightson
Road, Port of Spain.