Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad
and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 2 of January 2016 No. 739
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Dear
Friends,
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News on
Paul Quesnel, and Farouk.
glen
evelyn gevelyn1@bellsouth.net
11 dec
2015
Thanks for sharing. I do believe Paul and Farouk are with the king of
heaven.
Enjoy, Glen
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Rudi
Singh singhrudi@yahoo.com
Jan,
Thank you for sharing that. Your story gives us an insight into some
aspect of your lives that not much of us would have known.
Somehow it makes us feel a little more bonded.
Rudi
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11 dec
2015
I am very sorry too to hear Paul Quesnel has passed away. I knew him
very well all through the four years I was at MSB '63-'67 because he was in my
class. Yeah, as Ian says below, always cool.
After '67 I had no more encounters with him. Can’t suppress it but in
those days he looked very much like Dr. Kildare from the sixties television
series. It is through the circulars I found out he was from a cacao estate in
the mountains northwest behind MSB.
I wish I had known that during my MSB time, he wasn't all that
talkative, as I had been playing in the cacao growing business all through my
prepschool time in Suriname before I came to MSB. Here a picture of me in 1962
with freshly picked cacao in Suriname you can adore
Could have had a joint venture with him but times went different. The
coffee and cacao exporting business ended in Suriname around ‘65.
I missed the part he became head prefect because I left MSB before
entering form V, but yeah, he was the kind of fellah suited to the job. Don’t
think he gave much punishments.
In the prep dormitory in ‘63-‘64 he was my neighbour. One afternoon, in
the dormitory preparing to go for showering, I said something to him and he
replied. The supervisor didn’t see my telling part, only his reply and called
Paul for a licking with the stick. While I was the one who caused it. Boy he
was mad at me then, hitting me in the face later on coming out of the showers.
I had earned it but it was all boyish innocence never meaning to get him a
punishment.
Nigel, the name Farouk Bopha doesn’t ring a bell. In the circulars there
was a class picture with a younger boy Quesnel, it was said there he was the
nephew of Paul.
Much greetings to you all.
Jan Koenraadt
MSB ‘63-‘67
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Nigel
Boos <nigelboos@eagles-wings.ca>
11 dec
2015
I’m very sorry to hear that not only Paul Quesnel, but now, Farouk Bopha
has left us. May God have mercy on his soul and grant him eternal rest in
heaven.
But just for the record, can anyone confirm for me the spelling of his
family name, and whether he had any brother/s at MSB. I’ve met Anthony Bhopa
and I’m wondering whether he and Farouk might have been brothers. Also, I have
never heard of Farouk until tonight, after 13 years of trying to discover the
names of all of the OB’s for the database. No-one had ever previously mentioned
him to me. It’s strange that no-one had previously noticed his name was missing
from the database. Anyway, the dB is now a little more accurate.
Thanks for the update, Ian.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Nigel
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ian gomes
gomesian@yahoo.com
10 dic
Hi, All MSB Old Boys,
I received the under mentioned E Mail from Don Mitchell which advised
the passing of Paul Quesnel. Nigel Gomes
my brother advised he heard this yesterday. Two weeks ago it was Farouk Bopha.
Paul was the Head Prefect when I first entered MSB and was always a cool
honest fair person. He will be missed. At the reunion in 2011 Paul was present and
Johnny Garcia, Puggy and I were telling him of the treatment he gave us in
school (really just teasing him) and he just smiled throughout all our stories.
Still was cool as ever.
Ian
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Carlos
Dvorak carlos_dvorak@aincosa.com
May he be with God, I also remember him as one very honest fair person.
My best wishes.
Carlos Dvorak
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23
December 17:15
Blessed Christmas to you too Glen
and family.
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23
December 16:04
Wishing all a wonderful Christmas
/ Peace & Love /
cc. Sir Ladislao Kertesz, Sir Don ID Mitch, Sir Nigel Boos, Sir Jon Golding, Sir Harold Imamshah & Sir Kazim Abasali.
We look
forward to an even better year.
Cheers don't drink and drive, we
too old for dat. One Love, One Tribe.
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Carlos
Dvorak
Dec 30 at 8:05 PM
Mis
mejores deseos a todas aquellas personas que conocemos y queremos, con quienes
hemos compartido lo bueno y lo malo de este año, que en el próximo año tengamos
la suficiente fuerza y voluntad para dar lo mejor de nosotros mismos sin
esperar recompensa a nuestros esfuerzos, para trabajar en unión con todos, por
un mundo mejor, en el cual la paz sea posible, con justicia y equidad en el que
sobrevivan las utopías aun cuando parezcan y sean imposibles.
CON TODO
NUESTROS MEJORES DESEOS
CARLOS
DVORAK y FAMILIA.
----------------------------------------------------------------.
From:
George
amickiew@att.net
Season's Greetings from:
George
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Donald
A Goddard <dgodda1@lsu.edu>
Date: December
24, 2015 at 2:33:13 PM EST
Amigos, Friends & Family:
All you have to do is follow the message on the attachment. After a
hectic 2015, it would be a pleasure to take time to see you all in 2016: You
guys in Europe, perhaps; You guys in Mexico, Colombia & Venezuela,
would be great; You guys in the in the good ole USA, for sure.
Don G.
……………………………………………….,
Gmail Jan
<jankoenraadt@gmail.com>
3/11/14
Dear Ladislao,
Yes I receive your mails and links from Don Mitchell to the blog where
the circulars are.
We owe you a lot, tiredness you put in labour to keep up the connections
between the alumni’s as far away as the Netherlands!
For that, all my gratitude!
My class was the class graduating in summer 1968. I haven’t seen very
much alumni’s of my class, maybe one or two.
But now you enclose a picture of Derek Phillips and his wife. Yes, he
was in my class! Very hard to recognize in the picture, but that’s the problem
we all face, we are getting old.
Thanks very much for all your good works, I enjoy it very much.
Much greetings, Jan Koenraadt
-----------------------------------------------------------.
De: soincabf@gmail.com
Fecha: Dic 19, 2015
Hola Ladislao:
Te incluyo
abajo fotos de la familia Fontaine Bernardo.
Que tengas
unas Felices Navidades y un Prospero Año Nuevo 2016 con tu familia y seres
queridos.
Bernardo
Fontaine
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From: soincabf@gmail.com
Sent:
Saturday, December 19, 2015 12:40 PM
Subject:
Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year
Hi Don and Maggie:
Thank you for this short biography of the interesting events that you
carried out with a few accidents but in general great experience and events.
In Venezuela there is a little light at the end of the tunnel however it
is going to be an extremely difficult 2016.
Here in Venezuela business is practically non-existent with investments
in housing and a closed farm due to the communist laws implemented and lack of
equipment parts, farming products, labourers that do not want to work and,
lastly, insecurity. Thanks to Wall Street I am living comfortably and selling $
every month to have a good standard of living in Venezuela.
Are you in Jamaica or Anguilla? Next cruise will try to see you after 55
years has gone by of the last good times and souvenirs at Mount. Thanks to
modern technology we can communicate and “see”each other virtually, that is
great.
Am sending a few pictures of us. The photo sequence is as follows:
We will be spending Christmas and New Year at the Beach Apartment and
Club Puerto Azul in Naiguata, Venezuela
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with your loved ones.
Bernard, Flor, Marie Claire, Gabriel, Christian and Leonardo Fontaine
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Don
Mitchell <idmitch@anguillanet.com>
To Charles-Henri
Dunoyer de Noirmont
Jan 1 at 1:12 PM
Dear General Dunoyer de Noirmont,
I was interested to read your short bio in the Circular to which I have
placed the link above.
You may have known Joel (Toby) who was at Mount at the same time you
were there. He was perhaps my best friend between 1959 and 1964. He is
said to have come to a harsh end in France some years after he left the Abbey
School in 1964.
Do you have any information at all on what happened to him.
With all best wishes for the New Year.
Sincerely,
Don
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Nigel P. Boos <nigelboos@eagles-wings.ca>
Saturday,
April 12, 2008 10:33:08 AM
Don,
Thank you for this sad bit of information. The poor old man must have
been devastated.
I remember Joel very well, and he was one of the few Guadeloupians, so
far as I know, who actually came to school at the Mount. Nice young man, never
a very active chap, and if I remember, a bit chubby. He must have been about 14
when I last saw him. I wonder whether he had any children?
My mother used to import beautiful anthodium plants from Guadeloupe, and
I am going to find out whether she remembers Pere Blandin at all, on the
off-chance that he might have been her supplier.
So, thus ends a life story, eh? May his soul rest in peace.
I'm passing this note on to any of the Old Boys whose email addresses I
have, and who might remember Joel Blandin.
Nigel
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On
12-Apr-08, at 8:39 AM, Don Mitchell CBE QC wrote:
Hello Nigel,
You can take the question mark away from the RIP in the data base for
"Joel Guy Blandin". One day in about 1981, I was sitting in my office
in the Valley in Anguilla. An elderly potential client came in. We conversed in
a mixture of fractured French and English. He grew anthurium lillies in
Guadeloupe, but was looking to branch out into horticultural consulting with
one of the new hotels starting up in Anguilla.
He suddenly got up from his seat and examined a school photograph of
Form V class of 1963 hanging on my wall. He asked me if I was in it. I told him
yes. He asked me if I remembered Joel Guy Blandin, his son, who was also in the
photo. I told him I certainly did. He had been one of my best friends at Mount.
He and I had shared a mutual loathing for sports and scouting and all that
deviant physical stuff.
He told me, as far as I was able to understand him, that Joel had majored
in business administration at a Canadian university. He had immigrated to
France where he had married the daughter of a communist party leader in the
French city of Lyons. Joel had been the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of
Lyons. The two fell out, and Joel was assassinated by machine gun one day while
he was riding his motor cycle on the highway. The killers were never caught. I
expressed my sorrow and commiserations as best I could. I never saw him again.
Keep well.
don
---------------------------------------------------------------.
From:
GEORGE MICKIEWICZ [mailto: amickiew@att.net]
Sent:
Wednesday, November 18, 2015 7:41 AM
Subject:
I Wonder...How Many Non-Catholics Attended Our School?
This question came to mind in lieu of all the religious related wars
that have occurred in the past and are taking place now……never personally
experienced any religious related animosities nor other negative issues while
at the Mount from 1956 till 1962.
------------------------------------------
EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz
Send information to: kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be
in the circular’s mailing list or any old boy that you would like to include.
-----------------------------------------------
Photos:
15BF0010BFOGRP,
Bernard Fontaine and sons
15CD0001CDEWFE,
Charles-Henri Dunoyer and bride
04LL0003LLA,
Louis Lacour and a big fish
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