The “Windsor Park” – Dominica’s recreational ground named after Windsor-England, has played a significant role in our island life. Many who have gone before me will testify that this 5 ¼ acres of land have served Dominica and Dominicans well.
Located on the eastern side of Roseau, or should we just say Roseau Central, it was a popular venue for sports of all kinds. It looked small but was able to accommodate sports of all kinds. The local schools’ athletic championships, netball, basketball, volleyball, this was the place to be for the inter-schools sports competitions.
I remember the exciting entertainment of our local donkey races; this was a miss-it-and-blame-yourself-event, our “donkey derby”. It was there that we saw donkeys move into reverse gear instead of first or second or simply stall-refused to move. Those were the fun days at the Windsor Park. Our Dominica Grammar School kids used there as a main footpath from school as it made their walk shorter when heading to and from school early in the morning or hot and hungry after a full day of learning.
In 2007 came the realisation of “Dominica’s dream”, our own 12,000 capacity international cricket stadium. Today we enjoy the ambiance which we only heard of around the region. The World Creole Music Festival has finally found a home as we can now accommodate the growing yearly patrons. Our population has always been cricket lovers, so no matter how disappointed we may get towards the West Indies Cricket team, we just curse them up, suck our teeth-“stupes”, suck it up, and as soon as the next match is on we are with them again. These matches can now be experienced first-hand.
Now many more persons can experience seeing the West Indies in action. With that said; however, I often wonder what happened to our other sporting activities? Why haven’t a few other sporting events been given focus? The nature of the surface at the Windsor Park now makes it difficult to accommodate other sporting events such as football on a regular basis without costly maintenance work.
Leave a Reply