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Pat Ganase

The first time I met Alwin Chow was 1990, after the coup. My friend Penny brought him out to the farm. It was a social visit. I was managing my father’s hatchery and poultry farm while raising Orion (then six) and Anjani (four). We chatted with no reference to Alwin’s place of work, the Guardian newspapers.
Then I was called to attend an interview and bring along my CV. The interview was in the offices of ANSA McAl on Independence Square south. I felt very “farm girl” after not working in offices for about three years. I was hired as assistant to the managing director of the Trinidad Publishing Company and given an executive office next to the managing director’s (Alwin) and with very little direction or instruction, allowed to roam free in the Editorial offices. I used to call this “managing by walking around.” Now, I realise I was the cat among the pigeons.
Almost everything I learned about newspapers in the age of desktop publishing was trial and error. I had an ancient LED screen with green types and a blinking cursor. The pagination desk sported all the newest Mac equipment which was intimidating. Alwin’s mantra was embrace the technology; he was going to bring the oldest newspaper in the country into the 21st century.
Bigger than his devotion to technology was his strategy to invest the dissemination of “information for life” with new and innovative human resources. Management trainees were recruited to be shadow reporters in the newsroom and on the subs desk; after a probation period, outstanding candidates would be offered permanent jobs. Training for these new hires (and anyone else interested) was ramped up: Neville Stack (from UK newsrooms), Leara Rhodes (from US journalism schools) were teachers and mentors; alongside George John who was a daily reviewer and coach. How many journalists and communications professionals got their start there?
He invited editors and senior journalists to lunch with the members after each monthly board meeting. Such interactions fostered familiarity with seasoned professionals, and started new conversations. Remember the libel seminars by Lynette Seebaran-Suite? As journalists, we were always learning.
August interns - recent high school graduates and returning university students - were contracted as OJTs and infected with ink in their veins.
He beefed up the features desk with rebel writers like Simon Lee and Raymond Ramcharitar. Then he filled out a whole design and illustration department with artists Christopher Cozier, Wendell McShine, Clint DeLeon and other young artists. American-Trini Sean Drakes for photography. Anna Walcott writing for the newspaper a generation after her father. Corinne Aaron blending technology and text for the TV Guide. Skye Hernandez producing the first pullout Common Entrance practice papers. Weekly supplements for every occasion from Divali to Eid cooking, the opening of new medical centres and mall shopping.
Such a broad and forward-thinking outlook didn’t stop the Carnival debacle in 1993 when the entire run of the Guardian’s Carnival souvenir was pulled out of circulation and destroyed. The formidable Therese Mills, in response to the conservative readers of the country’s family newspaper, assembled the Features crew who had worked round the clock on the Carnival weekend to ensure that we were on the streets on Ash Wednesday, wanted to know what we were thinking to publish salacious images: J’ouvert black devils with 20-inch penises. That I was not fired outright seemed a minor miracle.
Disgrace covered entire departments: Features, Design and Illustration, Photography. It was likely Alwin’s patronage that kept us continuing to churn out weekly tv guides, supplements and special sections. Sunity Maharaj joined us as a special editor.
Alwin, who had been a partner at Pannell Fitzpatrick (1971 to 1983), had a special interest in the way business and politics were covered in the Guardian. I remember many a ring-dong session in our editorial meetings because he felt we were not getting deep enough into stories such as the merger of the Workers Bank and Penny Bank and NCB into First Citizens; or the pension funds held by Clico. He could argue loud and articulately, and when he felt the occasion needed, he could cuss stink.
He always had some insight to share when debates in parliament were particularly heated. He had been a senator in the first TT Republican Parliaments (1976 to 1981, nominated by the ULF; and 1981 to 1986, an independent) and he followed elections campaigns closely. In 1995, the office had just acquired new technology, a digital camera. And in a spur of the moment decision, it was decided that I would accept the invitation from Brian Kuei Tung to attend a “coming out” function at his home. I would go with Ranji on the camera. A relay was set up with Robert Saunders to collect the data packs (they were not yet chips) halfway through the evening.
The result was the front page exclusive of Brian Kuei Tung backing Basdeo Panday in the month before the hastily called elections of 1995. Next day, Alwin came to the newsroom chortling, “We could have printed ten or twenty thousand more, and they would have sold out.”
Alwin was not a person to say things like “good job,” because it was always a team effort, but everyone knew when we had done good. He challenged and sparked creativity: making the broadsheet distinctive again; and the first to use illustrations.
Came the fateful Friday (1996) when Richard Lord took the call from Prime Minister Panday. He said the PM was apoplectic, angry about something he had read in the newspaper. Ministerial scrutiny was piercing for the next week. The board tried to intervene. The owners (of the paper) tried to intervene. The Broadcasters and Publishers Association tried to intervene. The editors were resentful of the daily review of pages by board members. For all the pressure he must have endured, Alwin Chow stood solidly between his editors and government censure.
As Sunday editor, I usually had Monday off. That day at the start of the Easter vacation had been spent at Blanchisseuse. I returned to a ringing phone. “Alwin has been fired,” said my friend on the end. “He is packing up.” He was escorted out of the building by security. That night, the Guardian headlined the tv news: Sunity Maharaj on national television.
Within two days, most of the editors resigned. There were others who could not afford such quixotic action, and our sympathies were with them. With an earnest band of journalists, Alwin’s career in media continued to The Independent which was eventually sold to the Express. Thereafter his skills in project management turned to house construction and it is my understanding that Alwin was responsible for building hundreds of HDC homes between 1998 and this year.
What should not be forgotten were his love of Trinidad and Tobago and a tremendous Trini sense of humour. Who could forget his noisy exit from his office on an afternoon holding out a dollar looking for the nutsman. Or his wonder after he left, when he discovered that Guardians were no longer delivered to his home, “They cut me off. Dry so. They cut me off.”
In the seven years of his tenure at the Guardian, there was a burgeoning of talent and proliferation of product. Therese Mills went off with the Chokolingos to start the “good news paper,” TT Newsday. Journalists from that era have found their way to other media, print, television, radio, and online. I think it would be true to say that Alwin Chow helped to pull Trinidad newspapers into the 21st century.
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