Today marks the fifth anniversary of the death of the founder and former editor-in-chief of this newspaper, David de Caires. He was born in Georgetown in 1937, and embarked on his working life articled to a solicitor. He was later to open a law practice in King Street with Miles Fitzpatrick, a partnership which was to endure for almost three decades. Law, however, was never what de Caires regarded as his destiny in life, and along with others he made his first excursion into the field of publishing in the 1960s with the magazine New World, which had a political focus and reflected a wide sweep of interests.
New World did not survive, and the “frustrated publisher,” as de Caires liked to call himself, was presented with his real opportunity when Desmond Hoyte acceded to the presidency following the death of Forbes Burnham in 1985. As he often related, at the outset it was not his intention to start a newspaper; rather, he approached Ken Gordon of the Trinidad Express with a view to enquiring whether he had any plan to set one up. Gordon said no, but asked de Caires why he didn’t do so, and offered him all the help he might need. “I left his office in a daze,” de Caires recorded, “vaguely aware that I had embarked on a venture that would radically affect both my career as a lawyer and my life.”
De Caires and Gordon subsequently met Hoyte who indicated that he had no objection to the setting up of a newspaper, although he told them it
