A highly regarded army officer who helped found the Guyana Defense Force and who once accompanied Queen Elizabeth II during her royal tour of the Caribbean also succeeded in a different life: as an insurance agent in Toronto.
Ray Sattaur was “a true officer and a gentleman,” says his daughter, Ramona Sattaur. “Dad is quite famous and loved in Guyana for creating the Guyana Defense Force. Strangers I met in Canada sang his praises after knowing my last name and asking if he was my father. It was written and continues to be written often in the Guyanese newspapers. Dad is known to have been … a hero to his people. “
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana, the son of Mustafa Sattaur, a police officer, and Rose Bacchus, a homemaker, Ramon Lancelot Sattaur was raised Muslim but attended a Methodist elementary school, according to Gwenne Sattaur, his wife of 51 years. . “There,” he says, “he learned Bible stories, hymns and Christmas carols, which he loved to sing.”
He attended Central High School in Georgetown, where he excelled academically, acted in plays, and won a Coca-Cola spelling bee.
At age 17, Sattaur was accepted into the Officer Cadet Program at the world-renowned Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Camberley, England. “The program focused on basic military skills, aptitude, and decision-making designed to turn someone into a soldier leader,” says Gwenne. There, Sattaur turned to boxing, sparking a lifelong interest in the sport.
He graduated from Sandhurst in 1954. “Although most of the graduates returned to their home country as commissioned officers,” says Gwenne, “Ray was sent to the Jamaica Reserve Force as a major, as (British) Guiana did not he had his own army. ” In Jamaica, he accepted a job as a branch manager at Caribbean Atlantic Life Insurance Company.
In early 1965, Sattaur returned to British Guiana as a major to help recruit and train soldiers for the Guyana Defense Forces, an army for the country that will soon be independent from Guyana.
During the Royal Tour of the Caribbean in 1966, Sattaur escorted Queen Elizabeth II, who was only a few inches to the left of the monarch during her inspection of the troops. “It was a very proud moment for him,” says Gwenne. “As he always felt a close connection to England, he was honored to escort the Queen.”
British Guiana gained independence on May 26, 1966, but for Sattaur it had unexpected results. “He was shocked and devastated when he was not selected to lead the army for political reasons,” says Gwenne. “However, due to his strength of character and ability to deal with adversity, he was able to change the course of his life.” He came to Canada on a student visa in 1967 and studied commerce at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. He dropped off a year in his studies and moved to Toronto, where he started working at Empire Life Insurance Company and, as an immigrant, he sponsored his wife, Nellie Evelyn Preston, and their two young children, Ramona (born 1960) and Ramón ( 1962), to join him.
The couple divorced in 1970, and later that year Sattaur married high school teacher Gwenne Wardle, whom he met while she was volunteering for CUSO in Guyana in the mid-1960s.
Although disappointed at the end of his military career, Sattaur became a very successful life insurance agent. “People liked and trusted him,” says Gwenne. “He had integrity.” In the early 1970s, he was named a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable, an honor bestowed on those who sell $ 1 million worth of life insurance in a given year. “At the time, it was something that only the top five percent of salespeople were achieving,” says Gwenne.
He worked in the insurance business for 30 years. Upon retiring from the Canadian Life Insurers Association in 1998, Sattaur enjoyed a rich cultural life. Avid reader of classical and modern literature, as well as biographies of great military leaders and Hollywood stars, Sattaur was also a movie buff, favoring artists such as “Casablanca” and “The Godfather.” He also enjoyed all kinds of music, especially opera. These interests, combined with a memory that many who knew him said was “like a steel trap”, made him a champion in Trivial Pursuit.
During his retirement, he spent time with his sons and granddaughters, Sarah and Rebecca, and played golf several times a week at Station Creek Golf Club. Sattaur and Gwenne also traveled the world – Canada coast to coast, the Caribbean, South America, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, China, Turkey – and in 2003, returned to Guyana for the first time in 36 years.
Among other things, Sattaur will be remembered “for his great leadership, his intelligence, his sense of humor, his wit and his charismatic personality,” says Ramona. All of those traits were evident during a father-daughter trip to San Gimignano, Italy: Once, while on a crowded funicular, a cable car, Sattaur broke out singing Luciano Pavarotti’s version of “Funiculi Funicula.”
“Everyone on the funicular,” he says, “cheered and joined in.”
Reference-www.thestar.com