Ladies and gentlemen,
We are gathered here today to honor the life, the legacy, and the unrelenting spirit of a man whose presence was impossible to ignore and whose absence now feels almost unreal — Mr. Michael “Dickie” Lubin.
To speak of Mr. Lubin is to speak of a life richly lived — a man several years my senior, but who never once made that a barrier to friendship, mentorship, or comradeship. From the moment we met in the trenches of political work, he saw something in me — and believed in it, fiercely. That belief was always for me a source of strength. When doubts crept in, it was often words like his that realigned me. If there was ever someone who was good for my ego, it was Mr. Lubin. He never let me forget that I was, in his unforgettable phrasing, a “yoke of intellectualism”! And what could I say, if only because he’d say it with such an emphatic finality!
Michael was an auto-didact. Some of the greatest men and women in history were auto-didacts. An auto-didact is one who teaches himself or herself. He was a living testimony of Ivan Illich’s contention in De-Schooling Society, that education does not reside solely or even predominantly within the four walls of a school. Michael read voraciously, and back in the days of short-wave radio especially, he followed news events and current affairs from around the world. He was very well acquainted with the African Liberation Struggles of the 1960’s and 70’s, and he was one of two persons, the other being the late Gandolph St. Clair, with whom I, a keen student of these struggles myself, would discuss ad nauseum the decolonization of Africa. On a good day, we would have lengthy discussions on topics that ranged from the Mau Mau Uprising led by Jomo Kenyatta against British colonialism in Kenya, to the struggles of Patrice Lumumba against the Belgians in The Congo. And of course, as I am sure you would have guessed these discussions were generally conducted over a glass of milk!
Mr. Lubin was not just a man of politics and history. He was a man of letters, of community, of principle. He loved literature. He devoured current affairs. He relished a good turn of phrase and could give you a quote or a quip worthy of the finest minds. But for all his intellectualism, he remained grounded in the life and struggles of ordinary people. It is here — in the heart of Vieux-Fort — that his true brilliance shone.
As a Justice of the Peace, Mr. Lubin was in a league of his own. The most popular JP in town? Without a doubt. The favourite of the police? Ask any officer and they’ll tell you — if you needed fairness, if you needed wisdom, if you needed someone to mediate with dignity and discernment, you called Mr. Lubin. And time and again, he answered that call. His service wasn’t just diligent — it was devotional.
His politics, too, were more than just affiliations or ideologies. Mr. Lubin lived his beliefs. A proud social democrat, he fought for equity, for fairness, for the betterment of the many, not just the few. The Party he served wasn’t just a platform — it was his passion. His home. And even as life ebbed from him in recent months, his fire had not dimmed. I’ll never forget that recent visit, just a few weeks ago. There he was — frail in body, yes, but indomitable in spirit. He gripped my hand, looked me dead in the eye, and pledged his support for my bid to secure the Party’s nomination. He reminded me, in his way, that I was surrounded by a formidable team, and then, with a flash of the old Dickie militancy, promised to mount the platform himself to “deal with them.”
He had a biting sense of humor, which endeared many to him. Our mutual friend, Andrew Waxx Charles was known to him by no other name than the Chief Refugee Distributor from Darfur! Further, Mr. Lubin takes credit for some of the notable phrases that have found their way into the Vieux-Fort political parlance, if not that of Saint Lucia as a whole. Boom! Take that! It was he who gave us this gem of an interjection! Boom Take that!! It was he also who popularized the term “political bandits” promising to be boisterous in his resistance to them! And not far behind would come his promise to reduce them to a “yoke of fragmentation”. When he said these words, he said them in a tone that reverberated.
Brother Lubin was a fighter. A believer. A wordsmith. A patriot. A man of the people. And for me — he was more than all of these. He was a cheerleader and a friend.
Mr. Lubin’s legacy will not be measured solely by titles or years served, but by lives touched, minds stirred, and hearts warmed. In the corridors of justice, in the political trenches, in the quiet homes of Vieux-Fort’s citizens — his impact lives on.
So today, we don’t just mourn Mr. Lubin. We celebrate him. We thank him. We promise to carry forward the love he had for his community of Vieux-Fort.
Rest well, Comrade Michael Lubin. You’ve earned it. And may your voice — booming, baritone, and full of purpose — echo forever in the work we continue to do for the upliftment of the community you loved so much.
Augustus Cadette holds a Master of Public Policy (University Of Chicago) specializing in social and economic development policy; with solid quantitative skills; a sound understanding of the development issues of developing states; and 24 years of experience in a developing country, spanning community development, poverty alleviation, research, public policy analysis and public administration. Cadette also doubles as a poet, memoirist, and community and political activist. He is the author of In My Craft.