When Archdeacon Ewen Ratteray moved on to his second post, as a young curate in England, he never expected that he would marry a white woman, but "our eyes met across a crowded sanctuary!'', he laughs. "When I first went to England, straight from theological college in 1968, I'd never been in a cold climate before, so the worst part was getting used to the weather. But the people in Yorkshire were incredibly warm and welcoming.'' Fr. Ewen, who has experienced perhaps more than his fair share of controversy since he returned home in 1980 to become rector of the parish of Pembroke, says neither he nor his wife, Jennifer, experienced any kind of racism in England.

"Sometimes, people would come to the door, I would answer it and they would ask to see the vicar. There I was, standing there in my `collar', and I would say, `well, here I am', and they would do a sort of double-take -- and then get on with what they had come to say. I guess they just didn't realise. I was there, in Sowerby (near Halifax) for nine years, so they got used to me.'' Jennifer Brownridge sang in the church choir, and that was how they met. "I didn't care what colour he was, never really thought about it. My mother liked him from the very start,'' she recalls. "My father had died by then, and she used to say what a wonderful parish visitor he was, coming to our house all the time.'' "Then she found out why I was visiting so much,'' adds Fr. Ewen, "but we've always got on extremely well.'' "There was absolutely no opposition in England to our getting married,'' says Jennifer. "He and my older brother became close friends. My own friends weren't surprised by the fact that he was black, -- it was his job that shocked them! They couldn't believe I was going into that kind of lifestyle.

Yes, my family went to church every Sunday, but I wouldn't say we were terribly `religious'.'' Fr. Ewen says that when he announced his intention of marrying Jennifer, "there was some family opposition, but not a lot. My mother and brother Bobby, came over for the wedding, and Bobby was best man. Masses of people in Bermuda sent us wedding presents.'' Nevertheless, he is aware that some black women can be resentful when a black man marries a white woman. "They say, `What is wrong with us?' and my answer to that is, nothing. It's merely an accident of time and place. I didn't set out to do it -- I just happened to fall in love with someone who happened to be white. If I'd been working in a parish full of black people, I might well have met someone else! I was 30 when I was married, so I wasn't that young.'' With the tact expected of a clergyman's wife, Jennifer comments: "We had never experienced any racial problems, as a couple, in England. When we came to Bermuda, it was quite interesting!'' `People were shocked that we were a mixed couple' She hesitates, emphasising that last word, as she continues slowly: "I think people were shocked that we were a mixed couple. I was surprised that they were surprised because we'd been married since 1972, had three children by then, and it was something I never thought about. We had always been totally accepted as a couple and as a family. I think mixed marriages are more common now in Bermuda, than when we arrived here in 1980. But I think most people accepted us for what we were.'' Both agree that in their case, there were several factors which governed their reception in Bermuda. "There was no overt racism, initially -- nothing you could lay your finger on. I believe that some people just left the church when I came. Now whether that was to do with my colour, or some of the changes I made, I don't know. They had never had a black rector at St. John's before, and I am sure that was a bitter pill for some to swallow. On the other hand, maybe the job made it easier for people to accept us, as a couple.'' "But,'' interrupts Jennifer, "the nature of the job itself can be very difficult. Going into a new parish isn't just a colour thing, or maybe not a colour thing at all. Wherever you go, whichever country you are in, people look you over, to see if you are what they expected. After we were married, we moved to Airedale, which is a mining area. That was just as much of a shock for me, as it was to come here. I'd never lived in a mining area before.'' Fr. Ewen points out that their lifestyle there, working among working-class people, hardly prepared them for the social whirl that awaited them in Bermuda. "We'd never been invited to cocktail parties with the miners! I don't think people here were accustomed to a rector who had a family of small children, and they didn't understand how difficult it was to plunge into all that social life which they seemed to expect us to do when our children were seven, four and one.'' Today, Janine, who graduated from Dalhousie, is now 22 and studying law at the University of Kent in England, Alexandra, 19, is at the Bermuda College and Matthew, who is 17, is at Saltus Grammar School.

There was one, ugly racist incident, shortly after their arrival, which shocked Fr. Ewen. "I shall never forget it, because it was upfront and personal. A father came with his daughter to arrange her wedding. Now, this is unusual to start with, but I realised what was going on when he asked me if someone else could perform the service -- in my own church! When I asked why, he said the fiance was a foreigner and might have a problem with my colour. I can remember that brought tears to my eyes. I don't know why it got to me so much, but I had never really experienced truly direct racism before.'' Even so, Fr. Ewen had grown up in segregated Bermuda. "By the time I was about 16, I had decided that race didn't matter. It was no `Damascus Road' type of experience, but I came to the conclusion that people are people and they should be accepted for what they were, regardless of what they looked like. I grew up in Somerset and went to St. James' Church, which, at that time, practised segregation. They had separate Sunday Schools, and so on. I decided that the only way to try and change things was from within -- not by joining the AME church. It was so bad in Somerset, that years later, I noticed that one Sunday School was painted white, the other brown. I didn't have any white friends because I had never met any white people until I went away to college (Codrington Theological College in the West Indies).'' He pays tribute to Canon (now Bishop) Manning who, he says, did a lot to break down racial barriers at the Cathedral. "Even then, my mother and my aunty who sang in the choir there, were in the `second division', which only sang at night. The white choir sang at the morning service.'' Jennifer says they certainly planned to have children. "It didn't matter to us what colour they were, they were just our children!'' She adds that, in Britain, there is no reference to race on birth certificates. "No, I don't think they have ever had any kind of identity problem, but of course, I wouldn't like to speak for them. I do remember that Janine, at least, was teased when we came back, because she had a `funny' Yorkshire accent, but I don't know of anything else. As far as I know, they've never had any problems.

One of the things that upsets some people, is the fact that Ewen speaks with an `English' accent.'' "In fact,'' he says, "a lot of people think I'm white before they meet me, because of my voice. Some people here don't like English accents because it's a reminder of the colonial past. Somebody commented about that, to my face, at a funeral recently. If the value of a person is measured by his voice and the colour of his skin, then I think we're in pretty bad shape. However,'' he goes on, "I think it's good for us to be talking about racism. I think that some people think would like to think it's a figment of our imagination, but we have lived through some dreadful things here and we are still living with the effects of those things that did happen. So we have to deal with it. I think it's good to discuss these things, to try and understand each other better.

The church has started to address this, too. There is a lot more to be done, and there are some people in the church who are unhappy with that because it brings up issues they would prefer to remain buried. But I don't want to drag things up endlessly and be angry about it all, it is history -- a sad part of our history, but it has gone, and now, we need to let go.'' It was Jesus, he points out, who said that `a prophet is without honour in his own country'. I do think Bermudians are hardest on their own people. I've had a much harder time with my own people than with whites, always. Not so much over my marriage, but over my job. When I was made Archdeacon, a lot of my fellow blacks were very excited, much more than I was, but there was also an element of resentment, which is hard to understand. I think there is still a feeling that I am a tool of the white man, in the `white man's church' -- utter nonsense! We have to get past this sort of stuff. Life is too short, and too precious to waste on this kind of thing -- especially when it is untrue.''