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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
Fox hill Day celebrations. (BIS Photo/Peter Ramsay)
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NASSAU, The Bahamas – Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie and Government members joined Fox Hill Day celebrations Tuesday, which included visits to Baptist churches in Fox Hill Village and partaking in commemorative festivities. Photos show the Prime Minister showing youngsters the art of Junkanoo dance; and with colleagues, enjoying the communal spirit of Fox Hill Day –
Left to right: Prime Minister Christie, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works & Urban Development Philip Davis, Minister of Foreign Affairs & Immigration and MP for Fox Hill Fred Mitchell, Ambassador to CARICOM HE Picewell Forbes, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Immigration Cleola Hamilton, and Minister of Financial Services Hope Strachan. (BIS Photos/Peter Ramsay)
Remarks for Fox Hill Day
By
The Hon. Fred Mitchell
MP for Fox Hill
Minister of Foreign Affairs & Immigration
St Paul’s Baptist Church
11 August 2015
First I want to acknowledge the life and times of Paula Tynes who was with us last year but who is not with us this year. Who would have known? She had such a joyous time last year. It was to be her final bow before the Fox Hill crowd. A Great Fox Hill girl has gone on. We miss her. May she rest in peace.
I also remember today Mrs. Clementine Edgecombe, the wife of our former Member of Parliament, who passed away last week and is to be buried from Mt. Carey Baptist Church on Thursday of this week. May she rest in peace.
It is an honour again to help to put yet another Fox Hill Day into the history books, a tradition since the 1880s.
I welcome all of you be especially the Right Honourable Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and Cabinet and Parliamentary colleagues.
This is a special rite in which we all participate to reaffirm the tradition started just after the Emancipation Day of coming to Fox Hill to celebrate with the people here.
Fox Hill Day Junkanoo Dance. (BIS Photo/Peter Ramsay)
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For me, it has personal significance. I began this journey as a child. My mother used to bring my brother and me up here every year. As I get closer to the end of my own life, I find that there is the comfort of this tradition which brings me closer to my mother and father by the memories which I have of them.
Both of them taught me the value of accepting people for what they are and treating all people with respect and without prejudice. I have never deviated from that belief.
This is also the continuation of another journey that of the Prime Minister who has been coming to these celebrations from 1998 and now this year makes the 17th year that the tradition continues.
All of this is being done to reaffirm the promise which I made to the late George Mackey that if I succeeded him as the Parliamentary representative of this area that I would work to protect the cultural integrity of this community. I work every day to protect the dignity and the cultural life of this community.
This year once again significant resources have been invested by the government in support of the Fox Hill Festival which began in its modern incarnation under the leadership of the late Eric Wilmott in 1988.
Some 90,000 dollars in the construction of the monument at Freedom Park in honour of the four slain Fox Hillians: Claudzino Davis, Shanique Sands, Shaquille Demeritte and Eric Morrison. They were killed in a senseless act of violence on 27th December 2013.
NASSAU, The Bahamas – On his Fox Hill Day tour, Tuesday, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie stopped at Freedom Park to pay respects at the Memorial to those who lost their lives tragically almost two years ago in a shooting incident -- Shanique Sands, Claudzino Davis, Eric Morrison, and Shaquille Demeritte. The Memorial was dedicated on August 5, 2015. (BIS Photo/Peter Ramsay)
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In the future, we will have to invest further sums on the community upkeep of that monument.
Over the past two years almost 100,000 dollars has been invested in clearing bushy lots and right now there is land clearing going on. An effort will be made to invest in upkeep to avoid the continuous land clearing.
You will see that given the limited resources that we have had, Bernard Road is now being patched so that the bumpy rides should end.
I am hoping that before the need of the term, the sidewalks will be completed all the way from the parade grounds up to St. Agnes Church.
This year, we increased the subvention to the Festival with support from the Ministry of Tourism and from the MPs vote.
We contribute to each church to ensure that some support is given to the individual programmes.
What is the reason we do this? This is to build community; to build a sense of self- esteem in the church and in the community.
We are finding resources to finish the community centre and already have moved to finish the second floor of the building.
One thing I have learned throughout my years in public life is that you do not let others define who you are. Sidney Poitier once told me that you are the owner and the defender of your own image. It is up to you the individual to correct that image of who you are. I have never forgotten it.
No one can define who I am. No one.
I have sought to bring that sense of self-esteem to this community, and in fact build both proud traditions which were already established here. I hope that before I leave the scene, that Fox Hill will be as a political unit the same as Fox Hill the village.
It is now my privilege to call to address us the Right Honourable Prime Minister. I want to say that the Prime Minster is the holder of the most important executive office in our country. In that he is the defender of all the power and majesty that is reposed in the Bahamian state. No one should disrespect it.
You will notice that when the Prime Minister enters the room, we all stand. There is only one other office for which that honour is as a matter of protocol extended, that of the Governor General.
When he comes to the podium, I will ask you to stand.
We do that as a sign of the esteem and respect which we have for the Office of Prime Minister.
All the little boys and girls in this country one day want to aspire to that office. We cannot therefore allow anyone to denigrate it and anyone who does should be called out on it. That’s just the way it is.
This Prime Minister has supported the causes of Fox Hill and that is why we are doubly proud this morning to welcome him and I call upon you to join me by standing and welcoming him to this podium.
© Copyright 2015 by thebahamasweekly.com
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