A Review of Accidental Opportunities
Accidental Opportunities
A Journey Through Many Doors, An Autobiography
Bridglal Pachai may regard the opportunities arising in his life as accidental, but there is nothing haphazard about his achievements. His life’s work, as he recounts in this, the latest installment of his memoirs, has had one steadfast goal-the protection and advancement of the self-dignity of human beings.
Born of East Indian heritage in South African under the cruel repressions of apartheid, he learned early on that education was the key to freedom. Teaching and battling the kinds of discrimination he knew first-hand became his focus. After living and teaching in Ghana, Malawi, the Gambia, and Nigeria, he brought his family to Nova Scotia. This province has been his home since 1975, though his strong ties with, and work in, Africa have continued. His positions as a professor of history, an ombudsman, and Director of both the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and the Black Cultural Centre have given him useful experience and knowledge to take on his frequent returns to Africa to act in teaching and advisory capacities. In the same way, he recounts how his varied experiences in Africa have informed his work in Canada in the causes of education and human rights. Whether he is talking about Nelson Mandela’s government in South Africa or a local incident of racism in Nova Scotia, the lesson is the same. Those who have been discriminated against must be part of the process that brings about change. Always the pragmatist, Dr. Pachai has little patience for those who create policies but do nothing to make them work.
His unique perspective of constantly being the outsider, yet always at home in the world, makes this journal both enjoyable and instructive. Its language is at times overly formal, as might be expected from a man who has spent much of his adult life giving speeches and preparing presentations for government bodies. But his humour, enthusiastic energy for positive change, and love of people shine through on every page.
Dr. Pachai has gone through many doors to many lands, in every case leaving that part of the world a better place than when he arrived.-Ralph Higgins, Atlantic Books Today, Spring 2008