Tag Archives: Demerara River

SHORT STORY – Awash to the gunnels – By Geoff Burrowes

08/19/2021 – 1:53 am

  — By Geoff Burrowes

I read recently that Jerry Gouveia has died. I thought he would live forever. He was a takouba, probobly the toughest man I ever knew and I have known some tough ones! Sam Driver, his Dad Dickie Driver, Stan Brock, Louis Orella and some of the Macushi and Wapishana vacqeros I had the pleasere to work with: Peter, Olaaf,  Lionel, Walter  and Chico, Cesar Gorinsky’s friend.

My enduring memory of Jerry is of him securely clutching a rugby ball, flying down the touchline, knees high, with a devil may care grin on his face.

What most people don’t know about Jerry was that he was an accomplished oarsman. Pure muscle and sinew, Jerry pulled much more than his weight on the oars! The story I’m about to tell you is about Max Jardim, Jerry and his brother Alvaro!        Continue reading →

By guyaneseonline | Posted in Arts / Culture, Guyana, History, Personalities, Sports, Tourism / Entertainment | Also tagged , , , | Comments (5)

VIDEO: Georgetown from above – Featuring La Penitence Market and Alexander Village

06/11/2021 – 12:09 am

GEORGETOWN: AERIAL VIEW: + LA PENITENCE MARKET & ALEXANDER VILLAGE

Oct 25, 2020 – ITS OUR LIFE -ARD
COMMENT: The video is brilliant capturing Georgetown and its outskirts and the placid and wonderful Demerara River brings so much serenity as the dominant backdrop to the capital city of Georgetown Guyana 🇬🇾
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Guyana’s Waterways – By Dave Martins

02/25/2019 – 12:23 am

Guyana’s Waterways – By Dave Martins

Dave Martins

Stabroek News – Sunday 27 Jan 2019

Growing up in Guyana, or coming here to live, our waterways are part of your life. For me, growing up in West Demerara at Hague, in a house by the seaside, it was the rowdy Atlantic, a hundred yards away, and the long straight canal running from the village road, straight as an arrow, about a mile, past the train line, all the way to Hague Backdam where farmers planted rice and kept cattle.

Later, as we moved to live at Vreed-en-Hoop, travelling daily to school in town, it was the Demerara River, with the government ferry boats – Querriman; Lady Northcote; and the small, appropriately named, Hassar – where we would watch the few small cars on deck, with wooden chocks holding them in place. Surely they would be pitched into the sea when the Hassar rolled – and roll it did, but the chocks held.      Continue reading →

By guyaneseonline | Posted in Arts / Culture, Commentary, Drainage-Irrigation, Education, Environment, Geography, Guyana, guyana tourism, Personalities | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

THE 1939 HOPE BRIDGE OF UPPER DEMERARA – By Dmitri Allicock

08/15/2015 – 7:22 am

THE 1939 HOPE BRIDGE OF UPPER DEMERARA

The 1938 Hope Bridge

THE FIRST BRIDGE ACROSS THE DEMERARA RIVER

By Dmitri Allicock

The days of trembling tracks

Of Upper Demerara, way back

Whistle and thunder that excite

Laden cars coming with bauxite   Continue reading →

By guyaneseonline | Posted in Business, Geography, Guyana, History, Mining | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

FERRY OF THE FOG – By Dmitri Allicock + music video

08/14/2015 – 8:52 pm

Fog-Ferry

FERRY OF THE FOG

By Dmitri Allicock

The gentle Demerara River cast a foggy spell

Deep beyond the coast where the ferry dwells

Ferryboats connecting Linden in morning sway

Thick cloudy dampen vapors obscuring the day

Born of bauxite, a ferry, one hundred years old

Echoes in the fog of many stories yet to be told

— Continue reading →

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Memories: The start of World War II – by Vibert Lampkin

09/04/2013 – 5:14 am

Memories: The start of World War II – by Vibert Lampkin

Recently, I watched ‘The Last Prize’ which was a biography of the final years of Winston Churchill  [Wikipedia link] in office as Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War 11 and of course tomorrow is the 74th anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

I remember that day well – Sunday September 3, 1939. I was six years old and was sailing down from Mackenzie (the Town that bauxite built as it was called), 65 miles up the Demerara River to Georgetown to start school at St. Winifred’s Roman School in Newtown, Kitty, the next day. Since Guyana has no summer and no winter, only sun and rain, our ‘summer’ holiday from school was the month of August, the hottest month of the year. And traditionally as the first born, the eldest grandchild and the eldest nephew, I got to spend my holiday at the place I liked best – Mackenzie, mainly for the trip up river which – although only 65 miles – took all day on the river steamer, R.H. CARR. Continue reading →

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Nostalgia: Henry Street Werk-en-Rust – updated

07/06/2013 – 5:40 am

NOSTALGIA: HENRY STREET, WERK-EN-RUST – updated

by Peter Halder

Henry Street in Werk-en-Rust is a short street. It is only one block long. It extends from Princess Street on the south to Durban Street on the north. It is sandwiched between George Street on the east and Smyth Street on the west.

A denizen of Non Pareil Street, Albouystown (vide my Nostalgia: The Street Where I lived: Non Pareil Street, Albouystown), I became familiar with Henry Street in the late 1940s when I met and became a close and lasting friend of Carl Agard. I joined him in Scholarship Class at St. Stephen’s Church of Scotland School at the junction of St.Stephen, Princess and Adelaide Streets, Charlestown. We would go swimming often at clay, the parloff or other parts of the Punt Trench or explore the mangrove area on the bank of Demerara River at Ruimveldt, next to Art Williams Transport offices.   Read More »

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THE BREMNERS – Of Akyma-De Maria Elisabeth – Dmitri Allicock

06/05/2013 – 5:53 pm

THE BREMNERS

Of Akyma-De Maria Elisabeth

 By Dmitri Allicock

 “One Boviander family on the Demerara River lived at a lovely placed called Akyma, on a little Hill, rising about thirty feet from the river and crowned with feathery bamboos and tall cucurite and manicole palms. Their name was Bremner and their immediate ancestor was a Dutchman, who had been the post-holder at the Government post of Sebacabra, a hill on the right bank of the river about ninety miles from Georgetown.” Henry Kirke 1870.

 Nestled on the western shore of the Demerara, approximately seven miles south of Linden, is an unassuming place called Akyma, meaning Oh My!   Today, Akyma looks like any other location along the transparent brown Demerara River, covered with thick vegetation, dense screen of palms, evergreens of many varieties, tangled with creepers and other parasitic plants.

Read more:  The Bremners of Akyma – Dmitri Allicock

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The Pattersons of Christianburg – by Dmitri Allicock

05/27/2013 – 7:04 am

THE PATERSONS OF CHRISTIANBURG

GONE WITH THE WIND

By Dmitri Allicock

 The reign of business alongside the peaceful Demerara River was once held firmly for almost a century by one of the most successful families that ventured where so many others failed. The Paterson’s family accepted the enormous challenges of 1800’s frontier life and became legendary in the early history and foundations of British Guiana.

“These rivers know that strong and quiet man
Drove back a jungle, gave Guiana root
Against the shock of circumstances, and then
History move down river, leaving free
The forest to creep back, foot by quiet foot
And overhang black water to the sea.”           

 It was in the early 1800s that Scotsman John Dagleish Paterson {1775-1842} settled at Christianburg, Upper Demerara and founded the family concerns which grew to be one of the most noteworthy and prosperous in British Guiana. He was of the trios of Britons known in the history of the district as Three Friends, who arrived together to settle in Demerara as the colony capitulated to the British in 1803. The three men, Paterson, Spencer, and Blount, established themselves separately on estates on the Upper Demerara.       Continue reading →

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Another Demerara Harbour Bridge in the making

11/14/2012 – 5:24 am

Another Harbour Bridge in the making

November 2, 2012 | By |

Government has announced that it will be embarking on studies for an alternative to the aging Demerara Harbour Bridge.

The Demerara Harbour Bridge  (right)

Responding to questions at the Office of the President, Transport Minister Robeson Benn said that there has been interest, time and again, for a new bridge, but although information was provided not much has come out.    Continue reading →

By guyaneseonline | Posted in Business, Government, Guyana, Technology | Also tagged , , | Comments (9)
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