Taking pride of place on the front page of the 15 Aug. 1974 edition of The Caymanian Compass was a photo of Linford and Elsie Mae Pierson, accompanying an article about him being named Cayman’s deputy financial secretary, the first holder of that post. The story recounts Pierson’s background including leaving home at 15 to attend the West Indian Training College in Jamaica to study bookkeeping and accounting. In 1963, he took a six-month course in the Jamaica Audit Department and Treasury, and 10 years later, he finished a course in Britain due to his interest in finance “as well as fulfilling the needs of our fast-improving country”.
Also on the front page was the story headlined, ‘Caribbean Utilities To Expand’, in which CUC executives said they had ordered a new engine, twice the size of the largest one in use, and were going to order a second one. Two 30,000 fuel tanks were also going to be installed at the North Sound Road site. When the Compass asked about electricity rates possibly increasing, the CUC manager, noting the cost of living “is not going down”, said, “it is possible that the rates will be increased, but we can’t say [by] what at the moment”.
A photograph on page 10, with the headline ‘Paving Underway’, showed work being done at Snug Harbour to pave two miles of road. The project, which was scheduled to take two months to complete, was being done by Bodden and Bodden Development Co.
And, finally, there was an article that focused on vegetables, specifically those produced at Caledonian Farms. The company was running a pilot programme on Crewe Road to see which vegetables were best suited to Grand Cayman. The successful varieties were to be grown at the company’s 200-acre farm in North Side, which would also include livestock and fruit. To illustrate the effort was a photo of a young man with one of the summer cabbages grown at Caledonian.
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