A Kittitian born lecturer, curator and historian has returned to his homeland to inform the Federation of the importance of knowing one’s history

ZIZ News…March 11, 2010 – A Kittitian born lecturer, curator and historian has returned to his homeland to inform the Federation of the importance of knowing one’s history.

Dr Sheldon Taylor is a lecturer at Toronto University in Canada where he teaches African and Canadian studies.

Dr Taylor visited the ZIZ Studio’s where he spoke about how his Kittitian upbringing has influenced his own sense of history.

Dr Taylor said: “I think in many ways it was helpful because of the types of roots I had in St Kitts. I lived near Warner Park in a household with a woman called Annie Taylor Senior who had a very strong sense of history. We would travel to so many historical sights and I would talk to individuals her age, we would also do what we called a ‘moonlight walk’. I had the opportunity to visit households and speak to people a lot older than me and I got to know what history is all about.

“So by the time I left St Kitts for Canada in the 1960’s , although it would take me some time to get to university I had a keen sense of history, and a keen sense of self. Maybe not in terms of what I wanted to be but along the lines of realizing how the past influences the present significantly and in turn how the present influences the future as well.

For all those reasons I took that sense with me as an immigrant to Canada and eventually at the university level I attempted in a small way to study history to make a contribution.”