RAMBAUD, St. Martin:---Spoken word artist Raymond Helligar passed away in hospital in Guadeloupe on June 21, 2021. He was 73.
He leaves his beloved wife Joyce Helligar and a host of family members. He also leaves several friends, colleagues, and admirers throughout the island of St. Martin and in Guadeloupe.
Raymond Helligar, popularly known as “Big Ray,” hailed from Colom¬bier, one of the island’s traditional villages, well known for its fertile valley land, guavaberry harvests, and arrowroot work songs.
Following his CEG (1963) schooling in Marigot, Helligar attended the Lycée Général et Technologique de Baim¬bridge in Guadeloupe, where he graduated in 1966.
According to Friendly Anger, the labor history book by Joseph H. Lake, Jr., in 1978, Helligar led the Mullet Bay Employees Association in the first successful strike against the large and powerful resort in defense of an “unjustly fired” worker.
Helligar later became the owner of an environmental services business. This did not keep him from regularly participating in the cultural manifestations of his village.
In fact, between 2010 and 2013, he could be found participating prominently in cultural activities such as the Arrowroot Jollification and as the MC for the “I Love My Ram” animal husbandry fair.
Helligar, the former chairman of the Chamber of Commerce (Marigot) delegation to Guadeloupe, had also served as a vice president of the Chamber of Commerce (Guadeloupe).
He had brief stints of association with political parties or candidates during election time in the North and South of St. Martin. But none rose to the visibility that Helligar commanded championing what a 2016 Daily Herald article called, “the ongoing negotiations to obtain pensions for seniors who worked on the Dutch side in the 1970s.”
In 2014, Helligar had already approached the social security agency in the South, SZV, seeking clarity on the matter for the affected older heads who, like Helligar, were registered in the North of the island, a French territory.
Along the way Helligar picked up allies, such as labor leader Claire Elshot-Aventurin, who called the situation a “discrimination on the AOV,” the St. Maarten Seniors and Pensioners Association (SMSPA), and the Caisse de Retraite in Guadeloupe.
Helligar held his workers’ rights resolve to the end: “French St. Martin could not be considered as a foreign territory where residency is concerned.”
To Raymond Jessurun of the SMSPA, there is no doubt that the pension issue between both territories affecting the pensioners in question is part of a big picture framework of legal, constitutional, and ultimate political authority, one that has long been affecting the island divided by the Netherlands and France, while historical, familial and cultural bonds, links and association remain stubbornly “borderless.”
“Workers in Soualiga are not being treated equally and from a human rights perspective, we are in this trouble together. Authorities in the Netherlands and France are keeping us divided and unequal,” said Jessurun in the 2016 article. (Soualiga is a reputed pre-Columbian name for St. Martin.)
“Big Ray’s” cultural concerns didn’t have any doubt either about his “Marigot town” and “Great Bay town” (Or did he mean “tongue”?) — belonging to the one St. Martin of his “We Mother Tongue” poem. In fact, Helligar’s wider popularity as a public personality had much, if not more, to do with his involvement in the nation’s cultural life.
In the anthology Where I See The Sun–Contemporary Poetry in St. Martin (HNP, 2013), we read that, “Helligar’s spoken word pieces began to appear in earnest in late 2012.” They grew “out of nearly three years of Facebook comments and observations about traditional life and the need to preserve and record the island’s heritage sites.”
At one cultural program, as Helligar held up Where I See The Sun and was about to recite his signature poem, “Sin’ Martin is We’z Own,” he said that the book’s version was his “edited” version. He proceeded to read the poem in his nation tongue to the delight of the audience.
Helligar’s published work to date is the two poems in the book of 24 writers, which include leading poets Drisana Deborah Jack, Changa Hickinson, writers Roland Richardson and Jay Haviser, and fast-rising poets Tamara Groeneveldt and Faizah Tabasamu.
Between 2013 and 2017, Helligar’s defiant double entendre poem “We Cock” and his sermon-like “We Mother Tongue” were written and regularly recited.
Helligar performed these and other spoken word pieces at the Coffee & Soda Biscuits recitals organized by Sabrina Charville in Sandy Ground; and at The Poets Lounge, where Esdra Richardson held court in Simpson Bay.
He also read at St. Martin Book Fair Open Mic, coordinated by Groeneveldt at the University of St. Martin; and at the International Day of Poetry, hosted by Philipsburg Jubilee Library. The occasional poem by Raymond Helligar appeared in The Daily Herald and a sample of his spoken word videos are on Facebook and YouTube.
Over the last five years “Big Ray’s” classroom visits and radio and TV interviews afforded the cultural worker prime opportunities to read and talk about his poetry. A few people might have heard him talk about his dream to have a book of his poems published.
Awards and honors received by Raymond Helligar include France’s Knight of the National Order of Merit and a gold Palm Award for Volunteer Service (Fondation du Bénévolat, France).
The funeral service for Raymond Helligar was held at the “Church of Sandy-Ground” on Tuesday, July 6, 2021, starting at 1:30 PM. Interment followed at the Marigot cemetery.
Farewell, Mr. “Big Ray” Helligar.
