NAPARIMA COLLEGE
FOREVER
A Tale of Two Mirrors
..reflections of the past..


In the late 1860's, an Upper Canada furniture company shipped the same catalogue item, a mirror and dresser, to two customers in different parts of Canada. One shipment was to Rev. Kenneth Grant, in Nova Scotia ("Lower Canada"), possibly as a part of his change of domestic status as a new husband. The other shipment was to the political household of Sir John A. MacDonald, recently the first prime minister of the Dominion, at the then seat of federal government, Kingston, Ontario, possibly as a part of the perennial refurbishing of government's seats.
Rev. Grant, his mirror, dresser and other household effects were soon to be shipped to his particular rendezvous with destiny: the very different, little-developed tropical island of Trinidad. And thither they went by Nova Scotia schooner, to spend the next 37 years. The mirror and dresser stood in the minister's household in Trinidad while he pursued his life's work, until his retirement and return to Canada about 1907. At that time, they were sold to a close Trinidad family, in whose household they remained for several more decades.

In the 1980's, this family emigrated to Canada. To Ontario. To Kingston. And they took with them Rev. Grant's mirror. On a routine touristy circuit of a museum Government house in Kingston, the owner of Rev. Grant's mirror came face to face (literally!) with Sir John A.'s mirror - and stood transfixed in amazement, for she recognized the mirror-frame which had been in her household in Penal, Trinidad, since her infancy, and which she still had at home in Kingston, a short distance across town!

There, in Kingston, both mirror-frames currently reside, both with noble but very different histories indeed! Could it be that the tree from which they were constructed, grew and lived in the very vicinity in which, a hundred and thirty years later, these artifacts now stand?

...the photo above is of Sir John A's mirror, in his Kingston home, now a public museum...