BIOGRAPHY

Dame Hilda Bynoe is a Caribbean person, born in Grenada in a small village called Crochu. She spent most of her adult life as a teacher and doctor of medicine in Trinidad and Tobago and is deeply devoted to her family and community.

She was educated at the village school where her father, Thomas Joseph Gibbs, was headmaster and where her mother, sister and aunts had at one time or the other been teachers and at the St. Joseph' s Convent, the island' s only Catholic Secondary School for girls.

The first few years of adulthood were spent as a Teacher at the St. Joseph's Convent in San Fernando and at Bishop's Anstey High School in Port of Spain, Trinidad, as a Science Student; and afterwards at her Alma Mater as a Teacher.

In 1944 she left for Europe to study Medicine and graduated from London University, Royal Free Hospital, then the London School of Medicine for Women in 1951. While still a student, she met and married Peter Bynoe, a Trinidadian, R.A.F. Officer and student of Architecture; and it was here that her two sons Roland and Michael were born. The Bynoes returned to the West Indies in 1953 and Dr. Hilda Bynoe served in various disciplines of Medicine in Guyana and in Trinidad and Tobago for the next fifteen years.

In June 1968, she was appointed Govenor of the Associated States of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. She was the First Woman Governor in the British Commonwealth and First Native Governor of her island home. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1969, and retired from the duties of Office in February, 1974.

In Grenada Dame Hilda began to write poems and short stories, essays and vignettes and she continued off and on with these after she returned to Trinidad in 1974 to resume her medical practice and community service.

In 1990, she retired from medical practice to continue her writing and to assist in the care of her grand-daughters, Olukemi and Nandi Peta. She continues her Patronage of a number of organizations , including The Caribbean College of Family Physicians, The John Hayes Memorial Kidney Foundation, The Caribbean Women’s Association. She is a member of the Academic Board of St George’s University.

I Woke at Dawn was published in 1996.