The Sardinha de Paiva, Jardine and Sousa families

Joffre Nicholas Montmorency Sardine, known to everyone as Monty, was born on 23 November 1914 in Clifton, Union Island to Edgerton and Maud Edina Sardine. He was the sixth to be born of 16 children. His father was the magistrate in Union and also had the responsibility to entertain dignitaries on behalf of the government, later he was Post Master General. Dad learned to sail at an early age and in later years had share in a sailing yacht. Globe Trotter, with Ronald Gill and later he owned a motor launch.
Though there was a small school in Union, Monty was sent to St Vincent for his education and stayed at Camden Park with his aunt Maisie. She was in the bakery business for some time and a shop at Sisters Cottage and this gave Monty the hands on opportunity to learn the trade at an early age. At age 14 he started work for his father at his bakery in bottom town pushing a delivery trolley for bread and of course, baking but after a while he moved to the Hopley bakery and it was at this time he started dating Hyacinth Ambrose. It was at Hopley Bakery that he was given the chance to show what he knew about baking, he was well know in Kingstown for his quality of baking..

Monty in Cross Stitch
by his daughter Cheryl

He was not at Hopley for long and left to join his father who had taken a lease and contract from United Traders to restart the Sanitary Bakery, which had previously been closed as it was making no money. His brother Winston also joined them. United Traders was owned at the time by Frank Sardine Senior, Louie Marshal, Stein Nanton, Claude Layne, Edwin Layne, Lyle Gill and St Clair Mc Connie. The bakery was situated in Halifax Street opposite where Cable & Wireless is today, In due course Winston left for Canada due to a disagreement with Francis Sardine who wanted to change the contract terms, when realising how much money was turning over.
Monty ran the Sanitary Bakery for many years except for a brief period away where he set up the Sunrise Bakery for C K Greaves and, prior to this, a two year stay in Grenada, 1938 – 39, where he developed the Grenada Bakery Company also for United Traders Ltd. His cousin Francis Augustus was not a baker, his brother Mathew who was the one who learn't from his father, also name Francis Augustus, he left, and Sanitary Bakery was closed for some time. Monty was the master baker and carried on until the contract had expired when he carried on the business for Francis jr. until he left to set up his own business, Sardines Bakery with his brother Errol (Teddy). Sanitary bakery doors were closed for good. My father was the only one who knew baking while he worked at Sanitary.

On January 18 1940 Monty and Hyacinth married in Kingstown and initially lived at Cane Garden but shortly after moved to bottom town to live at his fathers house, previously the bakery. They subsequently moved to live with his mother in law, Theresa Ambrose in Upper Long Wall. There was to be eleven children of the marriage, Joffre, Franklyn, Arlene (who died as a baby), twins Paula and Orlanda, Roland, Carmet, Merle, Cheryl, Shalimar and Garnet.

The Bakery in Grenada

Monty bought his first property around 1950 which was a piece of land at Montrose with a small house that he extended. In later years his father, mother and sister Carmen (with her two children Gordon and Nedda) were to live there. Edgerton, an accomplished pianist, gave piano lessons and tuned and restored pianos, he was the main organ player at the Catholic church in Kingstown. In family terms, we see the same, to this day, with the technical and musical skills shown by his grand son Roland Sardine who also had a band called Greensleeves. Rolands second son, Alan is also heavily involved in music.
Monty was still working for Sanitary Bakery when, in1965, he and his brother Teddy bought the Royal Bakery on Halifax Street and, after much hard work and improvement, this became Sardines Bakery. He made a huge success of this and the quality of his products became the benchmark for bakery in St Vincent and the biggest in the island supplying over 90% of the bread.
He had the reputation for helping anyone he could and sometimes would be taken advantage of because of this. Many times he would fire a worker at the bakery only to re employ to give them a second chance. He treated everyone the same, rich or poor and never lost focus of the fact that it was the man in the street than put food on his table.
He never took a holiday and the only time he was away from work was when he was ill.

Hyacinth Ambrose around 1931.

The family continued to live in Long Wall and, over the time he was there he carried out remedial work and built on new rooms to the house to join the kitchen and the house which previously were connected by a wooden bridge. All of their children grew up there but by this time the children had all found their own way in life and eventually the move was made to Rose Cottage near Villa leaving Granny Ambrose with her son Paul at the house. Dad and Roland would call in to check on her from time to time and to pay Mrs Brown the maid, and it was on one such visit that they found her ill and moved her to Rose Cottage where Hyacinth nursed her back to health. Dad then looked after her until her death in 1983. She was supported in some measure by a few of her children who sent money to her.
You would think that getting up in the very early hours to go to the bakery followed by a long day would be enough for Monty, but no. He was not one to let a minute slip unused and had many other interests. His father had also an interest in bee keeping and kept some five hives at Montrose but, when he became too old to tend them Monty took them over and over the years built this number up to more than forty in many different locations. This allowed him to bottle honey commercially, with all of us family members washing and sterilising, capping and labelling bottles but also he exported honey in drums to the UK and this enterprise reached a peak around the mid 1960’s. It had always been the income from the honey that had sustained Dad in the hard times but also he used it to buy the books and school materials needed and even to help support my mothers family who were studying abroad.
Like his father he was also a wine maker using local fruit and would use the casks from imported Madeira wine to pack this as well as a number of liqueurs he made. He made some great cocktails before Sunday lunch.

Monty continued his success with Sardines Bakery, despite continued interference from government at the time, and from various members of family who were intent on seeing the bakery close and besmirching his name, until his death in 1986.
He had been happy to leave the running of the bakery with his son Roland who had been by his side since the early years of the enterprise, I remember well him getting the bakery ready for operation and maintaining the machinery, ovens and burners over the years. He was replaced however by two other sons who through lack of business acumen and the heeding of poor advice from other members outside our immediate family, managed to run the business into administration and closure. This loss of the fine legacy in terms of business and reputation left by Monty's years of hard work was totally unnecessary.

Teddy, Monty, Winston, Patrick Sardine.

Monty and Errol (Teddy) were the General Managers, with his brother Pat who was the accountant
and Teresa, Pat's daughter was the secretary. Teresa knew everything that went on in the running of the office.
Monty's brother in law Paul Ambrose was in the wholesale department, with Garnet, Monty's last son, their duty was making up the orders for the bakery clients. Eventually Paul Ambrose was fired by Dad for a number of reasons.

There are many fond memories of family experiences over the years that I am sure will be familiar to some older Vincentians like me, particularly to those aware of Portuguese family traditions.
I remember particularly the period leading up to Christmas. Dad would have a pig with three friends and on a Sunday in early November they would slaughter the pig in our yard at Long Wall. We used to pull the pillows tight over our heads to try and shut out the pigs squeals. The friends would divide the pig between them and Dad would cure parts of the pig for ham and keep some of the belly for ‘Vinadage’ which is the St Vincent name for the Carne de Vinha d’Alhos that I tried on a recent visit to Madeira. This would be fried dry for visitors at Christmas and served with a drink. ( Recipe).
At this time of year we would also be visited by serenaders, dressed in white shirts, dark trousers and a hat like a straw boater, they would play a banjo, accordion and harmonica for us and be rewarded with a drink and vinadage for their efforts.
When I was young another favourite place for my father on most Sundays was the Coronation Club which was run by Sylvester De Freitas. This was the gathering place for all the families of Portuguese descent in the area. It was situated at Villa where Lucky Balcombe subsequently built his house. When he died Sylvester was buried in the cross on the island just offshore.
We had some great picnics too. Dad would regularly load us into his small car and we would go to Mount Pleasant or South Rivers to spend the day often meeting up with a Viera or Cumberbatch family to share the cooking and of course the fun. I don’t forget either the calls from locals at the roadside of ‘Sardine and Bread’ or ‘Sardine in Tin’ referring to the crowd in the car. A rhyme also went ‘Sardine Crustcake Blowgo, Dominica Chieftown Roseau’, I’ll leave you to interpret. The Sardine family was well known throughout St Vincent.