Eugene Melnyk helps out Hurricane Honeymooners

Canadians Jana Lee Tryan and Joe Murray said “I do”, then arrived in Barbados for their honeymoon at the same time as Hurricane Tomas decided to head our way.

They’re in love so they didn’t mind the no water / no power at their hotel for three days, but they were getting a little grungy when they met Eugene Melnyk at Bert’s bar. When the businessman and hockey team owner found they were on their honeymoon he decided to do something nice for them. Soon they were being chauffeured to Melnyk’s estate at Crane’s beach.

A nice story. You can read the whole thing at the Ottawa Citizen: Melnyk deflects hurricane slapshot

Boscobel Shooting: Residents in fear as Barbados Police fail to respond

“Ten minutes of gunplay and shooting at football match”

“At least one from Boscobel Toll Gang involved” says witness

Contrary to a published news story that no locals were involved in the football-match shootout last Sunday night in Boscobel, a witness reports to Barbados Free Press that at least one of the gunslingers is part of the infamous Road Toll Gang that hangs out at the “T” in Boscobel.

The anonymoused email telling of the Toll Gang connection was one of several sent to Barbados Free Press about the shooting incident.

“The small man with the old round gun is one of them at the T” said the email. (We presume a “round” gun means a revolver as opposed to a Glock or other modern gun, although we’re guessing because we’ve never heard that “round gun” term before – Editor)

“Half an hour before first police come…”

Another person tells BFP that the police did not arrive for some 30 minutes after the first shots, but to their credit the police were not shy when they finally appeared.

Kammie Holder’s Swimming Upstream: The disease of evading accountability

Accountability and Offering Excuses for Excuses

by Kammie Holder

Most of our problems in life tend to come about as a result of trying to evade being accountable. It appears like a disease in the government, the private sector and in our personal lives. It’s just not an easy thing for some of us to accept accountability.

Accountability means we are responsible and answerable for our actions or inactions, thus the consequences must be accepted. Managers and leaders must accept accountability for the actions of others in their organization or on their team, just as they accept praise when the team does well.

In order to be accountable, we must also embrace the fundamental principle of integrity. It’s not always easy to do the right things, but we can save ourselves a whole lot of time and trouble if we invest a little more time to do things right the first time.

In communications with the late Prime Minister of Barbados David Thompson, he always reminded me to “Do what I think I have to do and what is always right.”

It’s also much more difficult to clean up a mess than to just simply avoid it.