Profiles: Heroes, Role Models and Pioneers of Trinidad and Tobago - by Nasser Khan

96 FREDERICK STREETLY (1893-1952) I n 1925 Frederick J. F. Streetly came to Trinidad from England and though he served the Anglican Church in various parishes for many years in both Trinidad and Tobago, he was a true pioneer in helping to establish local centres of technical education. At his first post in Tobago, at the church of St. Patrick at Mount Pleasant, he built the Rectory as well as the school, showing his engineering side and talents. But it was only when Reverend Streetly came toTrinidad in 1932 that his deep love for engineering shone brightly. He turned his attention to the Board of Industrial Training which had been set up in 1906 but was inactive. At St. Agnes’ Church in St. James as its Parish Priest, whose church he later rebuilt, he became involved in the Board’s work as an Instructor in Mechanical Engineering. He was responsible for the introduction of full-time education to young people in technical subjects. Later, when he was transferred to San Fernando to the St. Paul’s Anglican Church, he persuaded the Board of Industrial Training to set up the Junior Technical School in January 1943, the start of organised technical education in Trinidad and Tobago. On setting up the school he had arranged with the authorities of Trinidad Leaseholds Limited, the Company who owned the refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre, to employ the boys leaving his school as apprentices, enabling them to enter the workshops of the oil refinery and pursue the various crafts in engineering. By 1955, the accommodation offered had become inadequate and a new school, the San Fernando Technical Institute, was built at Les Efforts. • 1980 F.J.F. Streetly medal for Engineering to Graduates at UWI was introduced HAROLD F. SWANN (1890-1982) H e was the Principal of the Naparima Teachers’ Training College as well as the founder and first principal of Naparima College. He started Hillview College in 1955.