2

The Road
to Roseau

The village of St Joseph, where Ralph Casimir was born on 24 September 1898, lies halfway up the west coast of Dominica set in a valley between the towering mountain of Morne Diablotin and the more modest Morne Couronne. Typically for rural villages of the time, the majority of its inhabitants were fishermen and peasant farmers, whose land provided them with most of their food. They may also have grown cocoa and limes as cash crops. Nearby was the Hillsborough estate, modest in Caribbean terms but sizeable for Dominica with one of the largest water mills on the island.9 It is likely that Casimir was a descendant of one of the estate's slave families, emancipated in 1834.

Casimir's parents, Dudley, a carpenter, and Maria (née Toulon), a seamstress, were not part of the middle class but were none the less aspirational. They were well regarded and well known in the area. They would have lived in a traditional two or three-roomed wooden house with a half-hip galvanised roof overhanging the veranda. Known in Kwéy?l as a ti kai, it would have been raised from the ground on stilts. Dudley Casimir, who was a fine carpenter with a good reputation, would have worked on it, building extra rooms as needed. The kitchen was an out-building where food would be prepared and cooked using a coal pot and an open fire. Their toilet requirements would have been met by a pit latrine.

Postcard of St Joseph, the village on Dominica's west coast where Casimir was born and raised.

St Joseph was a cluster of similar wooden houses. The roads between them were stony, dirt tracks worn down by the constant tread of feet. The tufts of grass which sprung up alongside provided grazing for the resident goats tethered next to the houses. The church was already the iconic landmark that it is today. Its cruciform stone building had replaced the existing 1740 church in 1846 but it was not until 1891 that the front facade was completed.

In the same year that Casimir was born, the British tightened their hold on Dominica by introducing the Crown Colony Bill, by which the few enfranchised citizens of the British colony of Dominica lost the right to vote for elected representatives. As a consequence, many Dominicans resigned from every government board in protest and vowed that they would not serve again until their rights were regained. ARC Lockhart, a prominent newspaper owner, politician and distant relative of the author Jean Rhys, was one who was vociferous in his opposition, and he gave up his honorary position as justice of the peace and repeatedly refused a Legislative Council seat. Despite these difficulties, the new administration operated smoothly. It was no doubt aided by the arrival of a new administrator, Hesketh Bell, in 1899, which, according to Dominican historian Joseph A Boromé, 'signalled the beginning of the most brilliant administration the island ever experienced'.10

Dominica was never an important British colony. This was in part due to its mountainous terrain and dense rainforest and its mainly absentee British landowners. Its main value to Britain had been strategic. The British historian JA Froude, who visited the island in 1887, said that he was ashamed to see the British flag flying in Dominica as Britain had done 'nothing, absolutely nothing, to introduce her own civilisation, and thus Dominica is English only in name'.11

Descriptions of Roseau, the capital, some 12 miles south of St Joseph, were of a dilapidated town with neglected buildings and cobbled streets last laid by the French in the early 18th century and now beset with weeds between the cobbles. Hesketh Bell reported that all the public buildings were in a wretched state, devoid of paint; the usual source of lighting being a few kerosene lamps. There were only three carriages on the whole island and only a few miles of drivable road. 'Most of the island,' he reported, 'is still under virgin forest.'12 By the late 19th century, the population was around 28,000, most of whom were Roman Catholic and lived mainly in coastal villages, such as St Joseph.

A street in Roseau, the capital of Dominica, at the turn of the 20th century.

During Casimir's youth in St Joseph, conditions would have been even more stringent than those in the capital. Communication with Roseau and the other villages strung along the coast was on foot, by horse or donkey or, for those rich enough, there was the weekly boat from Roseau.

When reflecting on villages such as St Joseph, it is useful to remember the roots of such communities and the influences which dictated the ethnic composition, language and culture of its people.

The history of Dominica is a complex one. Its first inhabitants we have knowledge of migrated to Dominica from the banks of the Orinoco River in South America more than 3,000 years ago. Information about the different groups and waves of migration has been pieced together through archeological study. It was the Kalinago who named the island Waitukubuli (Tall is her body). They were the inhabitants who met and traded with the first Europeans. The island was sighted by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage, on 3 November 1493, and named Dominica as it was a Sunday. When the Spanish finally found a suitable harbour, they were impressed by the beauty of the island. Lennox Honychurch reports that Nicolo Syllacio, a translator of accounts of the voyage, recorded: 'Dominica is remarkable for the beauty of its mountains and the amenity of its verdue and must be seen to be believed.'13

The Spanish never settled the island but in order to replenish the slave labour in their other colonies they are reputed to have captured and enslaved Kalinagos, renamed Caribs by the Spanish, from a number of Leeward islands including Dominica. Spanish missionaries were brought to the island and met with hostility. For many years from around 1535, the island served as an outpost for supplying ships sailing to and from the Americas with wood and water.

Dominica remained unclaimed by European powers until it was settled by French planters in 1635. England, France's rival, soon vied for control. In 1686 both nations agreed to relinquish the island to the Kalinagos, yet repeatedly returned. By 1750, the Kalinagos had retreated to the rugged windward coast. Then in 1763, France ceded Dominica to England in the Treaty of Paris. It was during this period that John Greg, a businessman from Belfast, purchased the land at the mouth of the Layou valley in 1765, which would become Hillsborough estate. The French captured the island in 1778, but the English regained control in 1783.

Enslaved Africans were brought to the island as a result of European settlement to provide labour to work the estates. Links with the French islands continued; and runaway slaves from the French islands and displaced mulattos sought refuge in Dominica.14 This legacy of French occupation and migration meant that the people remained more French than British. Even today, many families still have relations, as well as both linguistic and cultural ties, in the French Antilles.

The Casimir family of St Joseph would have spoken both the French-based Kwéyòl and English. For many Dominicans, Kwéyòl was their mother tongue. As Governor Bell had put it: 'The great majority of coloured people speak nothing but patois.'15 At that time, Kwéyòl was known as patois and often described as 'broken French'. The French Creole language had developed during slavery and is also spoken in Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique and St Lucia. Its vocabulary is derived mainly from French with some words from the Niger Congo languages and the languages of the indigenous population: '. in an analysis of the Creole languages of the Caribbean as well as Caribbean culture, it is clear that Europe has affected Africa but equally Africa has affected Europe: the words are European, but the syntax is African.'16

English, however, was the official language in Dominica, and children who had access to education would have had to speak English at school. For people such as Dudley and Maria, who felt it important that their children should be able to rise out of their situation, education and the gathering of knowledge provided the route. Knowledge existed in books and in the newspapers which arrived by steamship from Roseau.

The Lady Mico Charity, set up to provide education for the formerly enslaved, had established 20 elementary schools in Dominica by 1840 - their non-denominational teaching was welcomed by the British government. Then, in 1853, an Education Act to operate secular schools was passed. However, the scheme met with opposition, and it was realised that the inclusion of the Catholic Church in the setting up of schools would be beneficial. The lieutenant governor noted that 'to do anything that would in any way withdraw children from the parental control of the priest' would be a mistake. In 1867, a new Education Bill was passed to bring about cooperation between the Board of Education and the Catholic Church. The result was a rapid increase in the number of Catholic elementary schools across the island, including the one in St Joseph.17

The three Casimir children, Ralph, his younger brother, Hubert, and Meredith, his younger sister, were among those who were able to go to school. Not everyone attended school on a regular basis as parents would withdraw their children to work in their 'gardens'. St Joseph's Elementary School was a wooden building with one long room in which...