D ELI GHT S | residences
Hot sauce and warm hospitality There’s plenty of dancing at the home of Barbados High Commissioner Evelyn Greaves By Margo Roston
The government of Barbados bought the Rockcliffe home in 1974 and built an addition 23 years later. Now the home can handle 150 people at a reception.
W
alk into the Rockcliffe home of Barbados High Commissioner Evelyn Greaves and his wife Francilia and you’re entering a sensory pleasure zone. The background music is calypso, the scent is island spices and the garden is filled with vivid yellows daisies, a show of pride for one of their country’s national colours. Flying fish, a delicate Barbadian specialty, is on the menu in the gracious dining room, its table sprightly set with turquoise napkins. The hosts promise the piquancy of hot sauce. There is nothing heavy or formal about this official residence, perched as it is on the edge of Rockcliffe, looking out on the tour buses wending their way along the Parkway and beyond to the greenery of Rockcliffe Park. Rather, the white stucco two-storey is filled with sunshine and the anticipation of Caribbean delights. 44
There’s much here that pleases the couple, who admit they like to watch the action on the roadway. “It brings life into the house,” Mrs. Greaves says, along with the sunlight that falls through its many windows. The house was originally built in 1948 for Senator Wishart Robertson, a Nova Scotian who had a long and successful political career in Ottawa, serving from his appointment in 1943 until 1965. Dr. John Bert Ewing, surgeon-in-chief at the Ottawa General Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, bought the house at 368 Lisgar Rd. in 1953 and it became a hub for tea parties and social gatherings organized by his wife Ethel, the president of many volunteer organizations in Ottawa. “It is very well constructed for entertaining,” says Sheena Pritchard, the Ewings’ daughter. In 1974, the government of Barbados bought the property and later in 1997
added a large, bright addition that faces the garden and small patio. While the main room of the addition is used for official entertaining, it also included a small, cheerful breakfast room. Using the addition, there is room for 150 people at an official reception, while the dining room seats 12 for dinner. The house with its classic centre hallway has two sitting rooms on one side while the dining room is on the other. Pictures of traditional dancers and the sugar cane harvest are on the walls, brought by the Greaves from their own collection, along with a Barbadian scene created in delicate batik that is a highlight of the dining room. Lining the reception room are pictures of Barbados’ national heroes, a group of 10 ranging from Bussa, the leader of an 1816 slave rebellion, to Errol Walton Barrow, the first prime minister of Barbados, and international cricket celebrity Sir Garfield Sobers. Large green FALL 09 | OCT–NOV–DEC