David Critchley was a respected public servant whose life was devoted to tackling the ills of society, both in his native Bermuda and Canada.
A social progressive, he once said he had spent his professional life “questioning the status quo and tilting at the windmills of the powers that be.”
The first Bermudian to choose social work as a profession, he studied in Canada, and worked there for two decades before returning home in 1972 to take up the post of Director of Social Services. In 1975, he became Permanent Secretary for Health and Social Services, a post he held until his retirement in 1988.
Youth development, education and income inequality were among his concerns. He also had a strong commitment to racial equality, which was largely unrecognised during his lifetime.
Segregated
Born and raised in Bermuda, Critchley was the son of Hazel Lusher and John Critchley, an Englishman who came to Bermuda with the British Royal Marines.
He attended Saltus Grammar School. In 1942, at age 16, he left Bermuda to continue his studies at Mount Allison Academy in New Brunswick, Canada, followed by Mount Allison University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1947. In 1949, he graduated from the University of Toronto with a master’s degree in social work.
In 1951, he returned to Bermuda to take up the post of Government youth adviser, serving in the post for two years. During this period, he reached across racial lines and teamed up with a group of black Bermudian activists to write a paper, “An Analysis of Bermuda’s Social Problems”.
Written in secret, the paper took aim at the island’s property-based voting system and racial segregation, calling them “props” that allowed powerful white male leaders, known as the Forty Thieves, to “maintain their unchallenged position.”
Permeated
Two years living in segregated Bermuda was as much as Critchley could bear and he returned to Canada. His wife, Molly, had recently given birth to their first child, Wendy, and as he explained in a 1972 Bermuda Sun article: “There was no way that I could see my child growing up in a Bermuda where life was lived according to such clear-cut racial barriers.
“If it hadn’t been for the fact that my mother was here I wouldn’t have had any interest in coming back at all. And when I did come back, I made my visits as short as I could manage."
Delinquent
Back in Canada, he enjoyed a varied career. He worked with disadvantaged and delinquent youth in Toronto and then joined the University Settlement, giving field instruction to University of Toronto social work students.
He subsequently became coordinator of youth services for a welfare council in Edmonton, Alberta, followed by four years as executive director of a children’s home in Winnepeg. In 1967, he joined the Maritime School of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia as associate professor.
His work in such areas as foster care, adoption and probation and with children with disabilities made him a natural fit for the post of Director of Social Services, which brought him back to Bermuda in 1972.
Dramatic
He was stunned by the changes Bermuda had undergone. “It was dramatic,” he told the Bermuda Sun. “When I left if anyone had told me we would move to where we are now I wouldn’t have believed them. At that time, I could see only bloodshed or things remaining as they were.”
In his new position, he saw an opportunity for Bermuda “to do some real pioneering, both in the narrow social sense and in the broad sense.”
After three years as Director of Social Services, he was appointed Permanent Secretary for Health and Social Services where his most significant contributions were the establishment in 1978 of the Child Development Project—now the Child Development Programme—for at-risk children and the appointment of Canadian David Archibald to head a Royal Commission on Drugs in 1983.
Critchley remained in the post of Permanent Secretary until his surprise retirement in 1988 two years ahead of his 65th birthday.
Addiction
Although he denied being frustrated by the slow pace of change within his ministry, public comments he made within days of his retirement suggested otherwise. He was critical of Government’s piecemeal approach to addressing the needs of single parents and the elderly. Single parents, he said, needed more financial support and teachers deserved to be paid more.
The following year, he authored a book Shackles of the Past, in which he wrote about his life, career and philosophy, the continuing racial divide, and expanded on his belief that Government needed to do much more to address social problems in Bermuda.
He was particularly critical of Government’s unwillingness to conduct research that would allow it to make informed decisions about social policy. He later said he was surprised by the criticism the book received; he had taken care, he said, to revise the original draft in order not to embarrass Bermuda’s political and labour leaders.
Opinion
In 1992, the year before his death, as the Government prepared to implant a controversial restructuring of the school system, he set out his concerns in a lengthy opinion piece in The Royal Gazette.
He argued that Government needed to tackle the root causes of social problems. Warwick Academy’s decision to pull out of the Government system would inevitably contribute to a public/private school system based on race and income.
The planned reforms in education, would come to nothing if resources were not spend on ensuring teachers were effective at their jobs.
The Child Development Project, whose goal was to ensure that “no child growing up in these Island would be allowed to fall by the wayside”, had nowhere near the financial resources needed for it to reach its full potential.
But he directed the bulk of his criticism at the Education Ministry, calling it “a frightening example of an authoritarian and closed system and a denial of all that we know about the kind of human relations that are required for organisational effectiveness.”
Tributes
In that, his last public salvo, he revealed he had polycystic kidneys, an inherited condition, and was undergoing dialysis.
He died a year later in Canada. News of his death brought tributes from politicians and former colleagues. They praised him for his courage and dedication and for his commitment to the needs of young people, families and those less fortunate.
Retired teacher Marion de Jean, who worked with him on the secret paper “Analysis” in the 1950s, said: “He was one of the people, when it was very unpopular to work in black causes. “He was a very progressive young white Bermudian, at the time. Dave had very strong feelings against racism. He really did do a lot to bring black people into Social Services, which when he started, was dominated by white expatriates.”
Former Health Minister Ann Cartwright DeCouto said: “He was a special man. Because although he was a civil servant, he took an interest that was visible to the public. According to the rule book he strayed, but he did it out of the best interest of Bermuda.”
Critchley was survived by his wife and four children, Wendy Davis Johnson, Beth Charlton, Spencer Critchley and Owen Critchley. He was buried at North Port, Nova Scotia, where his family spent their summers. A memorial service was held later in Bermuda.
Equality
In the years since his death, there has been greater public awareness of his commitment to racial equality.
Shackles of the Past was one of several Bermuda books about race and resistance that were acquired in 2015 by England’s Oxford University.
In July 2016, he was one of several Bermudians honoured by Government’s Emancipation Committee in a ceremony at Ruth Seaton James Auditorium.
Two decades after his death, Critchley's concerns about social and racial inequality and the Island’s education system seem as pertinent today as they were during his lifetime.
Editor’s Note: Critchley was the sole white co-author of “An Analysis of Bermuda’s Social Problems”. The other co-authors were Wilfred Allen, Alphonso Blackett, Yvonne Blackett, Edward de Jean, Marion de Jean, Carol Hill, Georgine Hill, Hilton Hill Sr., Leon Parris, Norman Pogson, Eva Robinson and Walter Robinson.
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