Ian Mc Donald (Guyanese Writer) - Biography

Biography

Ian McDonald was born on 18 April 1933, in St Augustine, Trinidad, where his mother, Thelma McDonald (née Seheult), and her parents were born and where his father, John Archie McDonald (who was born in St. Kitts and whose parents were born in Antigua), was Agricultural Director of Gordon Grant Limited. His uncle was Air Marshall Sir Arthur McDonald of Royal Air Force. He has four sisters – Heather Murray, Gillian Howie, Robin McDonald and Monica Purkis – and one brother, Archie McDonald.

He received his secondary education at Queen’s Royal College (1942–1951) in Port of Spain, where he obtained distinctions in History and English in the Higher School Certificate. He attended Clare College, Cambridge University (1951–1955), where he obtained a BA Honours Degree in History and later received his MA. He was elected President of the Cambridge University West Indian Society. He came to the then British Guiana in 1955 with the Booker Group of Companies. He has lived and worked in Guyana ever since.

He spent a long career in the sugar industry. His first job was Secretary of the Bookers BG Group Committee. He then became Company Secretary of Bookers Sugar Estates, where he rose to be Administrative Director. When Bookers was nationalised in 1976 he remained with the Guyana Sugar Corporation where he held the post of Director of Marketing and Administration from 1976 to 1999 when he retired from GuySuCo. His knowledge of regional and international sugar marketing in particular was built up over 52 years and in his field he has represented Guyana and CARICOM on innumerable occasions at international conferences and forums. At the regional level he held the post of Chairman of Marketing of the Sugar Association of the Caribbean from 1990 to 1999. In November 1995 he delivered an address and presented a paper on “The Sugar Industries Of The English-Speaking Caribbean” to the International Sugar Organisation in London.

He was appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Sugar Association of the Caribbean with effect from 1 January 2000 located in Georgetown, Guyana. He retired on 31 May 2007, after 52 years' service.

He was a member of the Guyana National Advisory Committee on External Negotiations.

He was also Chairman of Demerara Sugar Terminals which exports Guyana’s sugar. For 35 years he was a member of the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund Committee which provides land and housing, water supply, and welfare facilities for sugar workers.

He holds directorships in the Hand-in-Hand Fire and Life Insurance Companies, the Hand-in-Hand Trust Company, Woodlands Diagnostic & Imaging Centre Inc. He is a Director of the Institute of Private Enterprise Development which encourages the establishment and growth of small businesses. In 2000–2006 he was a Director of the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, one of the leading privately run hospitals in Guyana. He was also a Trustee of the St. John Boscoe Orphanage for Boys.

In January, 2009, he was appointed Chairman of Guyana Publications Inc., publishers of Stabroek News.

He is a member, since 2009, of the Council of Schoolnet Guyana, dedicated to the computerization of schools in Guyana.

In 1991/92 he held the position of Editorial Consultant with the West Indian Commission, chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal. His job was to assist in drafting and producing the Commission’s report, Time for Action. To assist in the work of the Commission he prepared a monograph, Bedrock of a Nation: Cultural Foundations of West Indian Integration.

In 1996 he was selected as an inaugural member of the West Indies 2000 Group, a “think-tank” of 40 West Indian personalities that had no agenda except to encourage the reality of a West Indian identity and the strengthening of the values of a West Indian heritage.