By Roger Arjoon
There is a sad and nearly universal truth: too often, we wait until someone is gone before fully acknowledging what they gave us. We postpone our gratitude, leave our admiration unspoken, and fail to honour them while they are still here to receive it. On Friday, Ian McDonald passed away peacefully at the age of 93. With his passing, Guyana and the wider Caribbean have lost not merely a distinguished man, but a living repository of our sporting, literary, poetic and cultural history. A remarkable voice has fallen silent, and only now may we begin to understand the depth of what has been lost.
A self-described “Antiguan by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, and West Indian by conviction,”Ian spent the better part of 65 years in Guyana, the country he chose as his home and served with extraordinary distinction.
A graduate of Clare College, Cambridge, he was a business executive with Bookers (later GuySuCo), an acclaimed poet, novelist and playwright, and an accomplished tennis and squash player. He competed at Wimbledon four times—in 1952-1954, and 1959—and reached the doubles quarterfinals at Queen’s Club, where he lost to the legendary Ken Rosewall. Ian was captain of the West Indies Davis Cup team. He was named Guyana’s Sportsman of the Year in 1957, won numerous national men’s tennis titles and finished as runner-up in the national men’s squash championship in 1977.
Although tennis was always his first sporting love, Ian was instrumental for the introduction of squash to Guyana. As he has recounted, in the early 1960s, Ian was a young marketing grunt at Bookers. The company’s British CEO, Edgar Readwin, was himself an excellent all round racquets player and regularly played tennis against Ian. Yet, despite his talents, Readwin could never beat him—a source of considerable frustration for a highly competitive CEO. Ian, whose confidence on a tennis court was matched only by his ability, reportedly told his boss—perhaps not the wisest career move—“I know I am supposed to let you win because you are the boss, but you will never ever beat me at tennis.”
That declaration did not sit particularly well with Readwin, who devised another way to even the score. He returned to Bookers’ headquarters in London and successfully requested financing to construct a squash court in Guyana, arguing that the company’s executives were becoming a little “round in the middle” and required exercise to improve their health and corporate productivity.
The request was approved, and the Georgetown Club graciously provided the real estate. In 1965, Guyana’s first squash court opened. Appropriately, the inaugural match was played between Edgar Readwin and Ian McDonald. Readwin won 9–0, 9–0, 9–0. After years of tennis torment, his revenge was swift, emphatic and complete. Years later, Ian relished retelling that story, fully appreciating the humour, if not humiliation at his own expense.
From that unorthodox—and perhaps inauspicious—beginning, the sport of squash took root in Guyana. Every national champion, every Caribbean title, every international success and every young player who has since stepped onto a Guyanese squash court is, in some measure, part of Ian’s legacy.
I was fortunate enough to help the Guyana Squash Association host the celebration of 60 Years of Guyana Squash in September 2025. During that commemorative weekend, the Association publicly and formally thanked Ian, presenting him with a plaque in recognition of his vital contribution to the establishment and development of the sport in Guyana. I remain deeply grateful that, as a squash community, we had the opportunity to express our appreciation to him while he was still here to receive it.
In preparing for the event, there was the prospect of having Ian, sports commentator Reds Pereira and sports historian Charwayne Walker at the same table. For me as a sports fan, it was one of the great missed opportunities, but the very possibility highlighted the extraordinary breadth of Ian’s sporting knowledge and perspective.
Yet for all his contributions to squash, tennis remained the sport in which he achieved his greatest sporting success. He once told me that he did not believe he had ever lost an official tennis match in Guyana, although he could no longer remember exactly how many national titles he had won.
Not only for the preservation of our sporting history, but also in recognition of genuine greatness, I urge the Guyana Lawn Tennis Association to formally acknowledge Ian’s extraordinary contribution to the sport and, one day, to enshrine him in a Guyana Tennis Hall of Fame. Such recognition would not merely honour Ian; it would affirm the importance of remembering those upon whose achievements our sporting traditions were built.
On a personal level, I was fortunate to live a stone’s throw from Ian in Bel Air Gardens and therefore had the privilege of spending quality time with him. I am forever grateful for his friendship. I am grateful for his counsel.
He served as a referee for my postgraduate fellowship in England. As a proud Cambridge graduate, however, he playfully chided me for crossing over to the dark (blue) side. My only response was: “Ah, yes. You can always tell a Cambridge man. . . you can’t tell him much. . . but you can always tell a Cambridge man.” Ian chuckled warmly and appreciated the quick retort.
Those who were privileged to visit him will remember him sitting and reading in his Berbice chair, on his verandah, or literary sanctuary he had created around himself. Books rose from floor to ceiling in almost every room. That, in itself, was hardly surprising for a man whose life was so deeply shaped by the love of language and literature.
What struck me most, however, were the dozens of Post-it notes protruding from every book on every shelf. Ian never read without a pen or pencil in hand—a practice I subsequently adopted. He meticulously annotated what he read, recording observations and preserving quotations that he found inspiring, intriguing or eloquent. Those quotations would later appear, thoughtfully woven into the estimated 1,500 articles he contributed to the Sunday Stabroek.
He also encouraged me to approach the late, great David de Caires about writing a column of my own. With intellectual heavyweights such as Ralph Ramkarran and Clive Thomas (and Ian himself) already engaged, there was, understandably, little room for me. Nevertheless, I have always remained grateful for Ian’s encouragement—and for what may have been his generously misplaced confidence in my abilities.
Death is a sobering reminder of our mortality. It also confronts us with reflection, gratitude and, inevitably, regret: regret that we do not always appreciate what we possess until it is gone; regret that we leave words of thanks unspoken; and regret that those who enrich our lives and our country do not always hear, while they are living, how much they have meant to us.
I am therefore profoundly thankful that, as a squash community, we had grabbed that opportunity to publicly acknowledge his contribution, express our gratitude and honour his squash achievements. He spent much of his life recognizing, recording and celebrating the accomplishments of others. It was fitting that, before the end, we were able to do the same for him.
Ninety-three is a damn fine knock. Ian’s was an innings played with intellectual curiosity, cultural embrace, literary excellence, sporting passion, poetic grace and an abiding belief in a better Guyana. He lived fully, contributed generously and left every field he entered—business, sport, literature and public life—richer than he found it.
Perhaps we did not fully comprehend, during his lifetime, the weight of his contribution to our nation. Perhaps greatness of his kind is too broad to be measured while it is still among us. But now, in the quiet left by his passing, may we recognise what we had, preserve what he gave us and honour the extraordinary life of Ian McDonald. May his innings be remembered long after he has left the field, after the floodlights have been turned off and after the applause has faded away. RIP Ian.
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