Looking Back From The 21st Century In Sri Lanka

By Emil van der Poorten –December 13, 2015

Emil van der Poorten

Within a month I had occasion to visit the chapel of my alma mater, Trinity College, Kandy (TCK) on two occasions. The first was to be part of the final rites for a good man and a dear friend. The second was to attend the “Carol Service” held on the first Sunday of December at this most unique of Christian places of worship.

While the event held on the first Sunday of December is truly a visual and aural treat for even a catechumen like me, the history of the Holy Trinity Church, to give it its full name, evoked a variety of thoughts not necessarily associated with the practice of Christianity and its rituals.

It is only recently that one of Sri Lanka’s premier architects drew attention to the fact that the TCK chapel is one of Sri Lanka’s architectural gems, combining traditional forms with more open concepts something that preceded the iconic work of Sri Lanka’s premier architect of all time, Geoffrey Bawa, by almost half a century.

The very history of the building also is of enormous significance (or should be!) to anyone interested in the more worldly history of our country.

Trinity, as most would know, emerged out of the Anglican educational tradition during the time of the British raj. The Rev. A. G. Fraser, a man way ahead of his time in the matter of liberal education in a British colony, enabled those who wished to be instructed in their mother tongues – Sinhala & Tamil – to have that facility afforded them at least in the primary classes. This was without precedent at that point of British colonial history, the first quarter of the 20th Century.

To digress, for a moment, I had occasion to work with a very senior government servant in Alberta, Canada in the late 1980s who was of Ghanaian origin. In the course of a conversation, I mentioned the fact that Fraser had spent time on a sort of sabbatical from his primary job as Principal of Trinity, around 1912, helping establish Achimota College in what was then the Gold Coast. My Ghanaian friend was impressed no end by my very association with an institution that Fraser had ties to and which, to hear him tell it, was far and away Ghana’s finest and most highly regarded educational institution. Talk about elevation by association!

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