Minshall pays tribute to ‘Mac’

Artist and masman Peter Minshall has paid tribute to late veteran masman MacDonald Ward saying he saw mas as art long before anyone else.

“There was no truer patron of the arts that I know than MacDonald Ward,” Minshall said.

According to reports, Ward died at his Maraval home on Friday after a brief battle with liver cancer. He was 78. Ward was the owner of the popular Mas Camp Pub in Woodbrook which was the location of Minshall’s mas camp.

Minshall in a Facebook post entitled “This one’s for you Mac,” recalled an interaction with Ward from 36 years ago.

“It was 1981, late October, maybe early November, and I was in New York with over one hundred butterfly drawings under my arm in a portfolio, and I didn’t know what to do with them.

“I had made the designs for an ambitious mas band called PAPILLON, (here today, gone tomorrow), but I didn’t have a penny: I had no financial backing.

I had tried all my known possible sources and options in vain. I felt totally lost. Nervously, anxiously, I called MacDonald Ward long distance, from New York to Port of Spain, to ask him what to do.

“It was Mac, quiet, strong, reliable Mac, the self-same Mac who had played King for George Bailey, it was Mac who set me straight, in his disarmingly simple, direct, straightforward way.

“’How do you spell Carnival?’ he asked me over the phone.

“‘What?’ I said.

“‘M-I-N-S-H-A-L-L,’ he said. ‘You bring the designs. We will bring the mas.’

Minshall said people called “Mac” a bookie and that he made his fortune with a string of betting shops.

“Well look at that now. All I can say is that he put his money where his mouth is. He placed a huge bet on me. He believed in the mas. He believed in me. He put his faith in me. He gave me to myself. I am deeply indebted to him. We all are who see mas as art. God knows, MacDonald Ward saw mas as art long before anyone else did.”

Minshall said with Ward’s death, his team was embarking on a major contemporary work of art in the mas called, “The Eyes Of God,” with a singular message: “Even as he himself, MacDonald Ward, one of the mighty angels, flies off.

“This one’s for you Mac.”