Bermudian educator and writer Lowdru Robinson has packed much into nearly nine decades of life.

He has taught at every level from elementary school to university in Bermuda, Canada and China.

As Bermuda’s first director of community relations, which later became community affairs, he helped to shape some of the island’s most important social programmes, including the creation of Bermuda Day and the modern Bermuda Day Parade.

Bermudians can read about his adventures in three books he has written. They are an autobiography, My Story, a memoir, Golden Memories, and Our World — Forgotten History: A Collection of Essays from the Affable Curmudgeon, a compilation of his blog posts.

The books are not for general sale, but while visiting family in Bermuda last month, he presented copies to the Bermuda National Library, the Bermuda Archives and the Bermuda College.

Today, John Woolridge’s 2010 song, Proud to Be Bermudian, moves him to tears.

However, as a young person, Mr Robinson could not wait to flee Bermuda’s racial oppression.

Growing up, the main scholarship route open to Black students was teacher training. He took a two‑year scholarship abroad with the idea of becoming a teacher and then, perhaps, a lawyer.

He fell in love with teaching.

The scholarship required him to teach in Bermuda for three years after his overseas education.

The day his teaching contract ended in 1961, he was on the flight that afternoon for Canada.

“I vowed never to come back,” he said. “I couldn’t deal with the segregation in Bermuda.”

He still remembers his first impressions of Canada after leaving Bermuda.

“One of the things that stood out to me was being able to go to a movie theatre and not being classified by race,” he said. “It was the first time I had lived in a free society.”

Mr Robinson said it was no surprise that the 1959 theatre boycott in Bermuda was led by teachers who had trained in Canada or Britain.

They had experienced more equal treatment abroad.

Mr Robinson’s mind did not change about returning to Bermuda for many years.

“I was working at Crestwood Vocational School in Hamilton, Ontario,” he said. “I had worked out an exchange programme between our school and Reverend Dr Merle Brock Swan Williams’s class in Bermuda.”

She gave him a job application for a new post opening up as director of community relations.

Mainly to please her, he filled out the form and sent it in.

He ended up being hired.

He accepted the job because he wanted to play a role in bettering his birthplace. The community was still reeling from the 1977 riots.

The 1978 Pitt Report called for urgent social reforms to address inequalities in education, housing and job opportunities for Black Bermudians.

“Thankfully, the Pitt Report had an excellent outline of what needed to be done,” Mr Robinson said. “I took my lead from studying that completely and implementing a number of programmes.”

The report revealed that the annual May 24 Half Marathon Derby was the most integrated event in Bermuda. Shared interests, such as running, could be used as a unifier.

From that idea grew Bermuda Day.

Mr Robinson advocated changing May 24 from Victoria Day, as the holiday was still known then, to Bermuda Day, with the marathon in the morning and wider celebrations around it.

He worked with Cynthia Taylor, a former Berkeley teacher and pioneering community educator in Canada, on community projects and drew on his experiences of Canada Day celebrations and multicultural festivals in Hamilton, Ontario.

He also drew on Caribbean parade traditions, collaborating with event promoters such as the late Eddie DeMello, Choy Aming and Walter “Dickey” Green.

While working as director of community relations, Mr Robinson also became a strong proponent of community education as a tool for social harmony.

Drawing from programmes in Canada, he helped to expand community schooling in Bermuda from one site at Warwick Secondary School to six locations islandwide, offering classes in subjects such as photography, painting, computers and more.

Mr Robinson sees community education as the perfect vehicle for social unity.

He expressed regret that community education opportunities have diminished in Bermuda.

He left the Civil Service in 2000 to teach English in China.

After years residing in Bristol, England, for several years, he now lives in Waterloo, Ontario, with his family.

His last visit to the island was 2022 when he came to see the Bermuda Day Parade.

“Last year, they named a float after me,” he said. “That was quite an experience. Someone sent me a newspaper and I got to see pictures of it.”

This time he was here for a longer spell and had the chance to look around more.

“The countryside and the houses still have that flair, colour and beauty, but everything is more built up,” he said.

The traffic particularly shocked him.

“I cannot believe the speed that people on bikes are going,” he said. “It is suicidal.”

However, he was pleased at the speed of social progress in Bermuda over the past 20 years.

“It has been amazing,” he said. “Bermuda is on the road towards a harmonious society.”

For that to continue, he argued, Bermudians must move away from thinking in terms of “race relations” and focus more on human relationships.

“Race is a concept,” he said. “There is no such thing as a White race, no such thing as a Black race or race at all. We are all humans. It is all artificial. As long as we have White and Black, there is going to be conflict, and less progress towards real harmony.”