Ronnie des Vignes mas' playing career ends on high note
June 26, 2023
Writhing in pain in a downtown hospital emergency room hours after his costume toppled and almost crushed him to death at last year’s King & Queen showcase at Lamport Stadium, Ronald ‘Ronnie’ des Vignes could barely force a smile after learning he had won the Male Individual title.
It was a bittersweet moment for the veteran mas’ player whose outfit depicting ‘Protector of the Underworld Gods’ was an audience pleaser.
Hearing the roars of the crowd and feeling great after performing for the judges, the wind suddenly picked up.
“It started to blow the heavy costume and I could not hold it back,” des Vignes, who turns 77 in December, recalled. “I had no control and I knew something bad was going to happen.”
As he was exiting the stage, the costume tilted and toppled, resulting in three broken ribs and ligament damage to his right knee.
“While under the costume, my heel bent all the way back under my butt,” said des Vignes. “I was screaming in pain as the ambulance took me away to hospital.”
At her husband’s side as he was receiving medical attention, Nancy des Vignes got a phone call from a family friend in Trinidad saying, ‘I hear Ronnie win’.
“I got goosebumps because we had no idea what the outcome was,” she said. “Everyone in the hospital room began celebrating when I made the announcement.”
With the parade cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic and with a left knee becoming increasingly painful over the years, des Vignes thought his mas’ playing days were over.
That was until Carnival Nationz band co-leader Marcus Eustace called in May 2022.
“He said I was the only person he wanted to play the Male Individual and then asked if I was playing with any other band,” said des Vignes. “When I told him my playing career was over, he insisted I was the only one that could carry the costume. He also gave me a heads up that it was big.”
Unable to resist the temptation, des Vignes caved in.
“I went to the camp and helped build the costume,” he pointed out. “I felt real good in that environment even though Nancy, who had I had promised I was done playing, kept reminding me I was 75.”
While getting his make-up done on the night of the show, a bird dropped its poop on his left shoulder.
“The lady who was doing the make-up told me it was good luck,” said des Vignes. “I had on a sleeveless top and the soft poop was running down my shoulder. I asked for a napkin to wipe it off. She was right, but I don’t know if getting rid of it had anything to do with what happened after I was judged.”
Still receiving therapy for the injuries, he is suing the Festival Management Committee (FMC) for damages.
“The stage was elevated about 18 inches off the ground and there was no protection to block the wheels from going over it,” noted des Vignes who was born in San Fernando and raised in Petit Valley.
Ronnie des Vignes playing mas’ in 2016 (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Leaving Trinidad & Tobago in 1988 for better opportunities, he started playing mas’ the next year with Errol Achue’s Mas Toronto band.
Playing ‘Drunken Sailor’, des Vignes introduction to mas’ in a new city was memorable.
“I had a ball playing like a drunken sailor,” he recounted. “I was hitting the ground and coming back up and the crowd was going crazy. It was like if I was in a different world. When I came off stage, an elderly woman who seemed to be in her 80s approached me and said, ‘Son, yuh make me laugh, yuh make me cry, yuh make me pee myself’. I will never forget her words.”
In 2004, he captured his first and only King of the Band title.
After nearly a decade with Mas Toronto, des Vignes spent two years with Louis Saldenah’s band before joining Carnival Nationz.
Fifteen years ago, he finished sixth in the Trinidad Carnival King of the Band competition. Playing ‘Cocoa in the Sun’ with a small band. It was the only time he took part in a carnival competition in his birth country.
With the bands gearing up for this year’s Toronto Carnival, des Vignes is still trying to come to grips with the fact that he is no longer making costumes or preparing for competition.
“The good thing is I have a rhythm section playing music and I will be in some of the mas’ camps,” the septuagenarian pointed out. “When we are not playing, I will go and look at people making costumes.”
The late Selwyn ‘Sello’ Joseph and des Vignes started Rhythm Rollers many years ago.
Now comprising three members, the band play on boat cruises and at band launches and private events across the city.
They play bongos, congas and iron.
“It is soca music and we just enhance what the deejays play,” said des Vignes whose younger brother, Justice Andre des Vignes, died in the twin islands republic in January 2022. “We ask them to play about a dozen tunes, not too fast or not too slow, for our rhythm section.”
Ever since his mother put him in a costume just before his third birthday, he has been immersed in carnival.
“I love to dance and just have a good time,” said des Vignes who was part of the TCC contingent that went to Hong Kong in 2005 to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
A graduate of Queen’s Royal College whose notable alumni include Guyanese-born creative designer Peter Minshall, pre-eminent Caribbean philosopher and historian CLR James, Trinidad & Tobago’s first Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams and Nobel Prize laureate Vidiadhar Naipaul, he won a track scholarship in the late 1960s to attend South Carolina State University.
des Vignes left after two years because of racial tension and the Orangeburg Massacre in February 1968 when police killed three Black student protestors and injured 28 others.
“I didn’t experience racism until I got to that campus,” he said. “I went into town for a haircut and when I got to a barbershop and knocked at the door, the barber refused to open it. He made a sign suggesting that I am not welcomed and I should leave. I didn’t know what was happening because there were people inside the shop. When I told my roommate what had happened, he said that is a White barbershop and Blacks were not accepted there.”
On the day of the Massacre, des Vignes – who was pursuing pre-dentistry studies -- sensed things were going to take a turn for the worse and kept his distance.
“After that, things really deteriorated to the point where students had to sleep on the ground because White people were shooting through the campus windows,” he said. “At that point, I decided to get out of there and return home.”
After working in the insurance sector and at Sports & Games where late West Indies cricketer Gerry Gomez was the manager, des Vignes came to Canada and was employed with a bottling plant for several years before retiring.
He and his wife met at a party in 1995 and tied the nuptial knot 23 years ago.
Ronnie & Nancy des Vignes (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
“I am so proud of Nancy and her parents (they are 100 and 99) who have been very supportive of everything I have done in the last three decades,” des Vignes, the father of three grown daughters, said.
Carnival culture was new to his spouse when a friend, Cheryl Lee Kam, made the introduction.
“My background is very different and I felt like a fish out water,” she said. “When Cheryl invited me to come and play mas’, I asked her what that was. When I went to Ottawa to play with her for the first time, I remember seeing the women dressed in skimpy outfits and I was like ‘What the hell is that?’ I was so mortified that I couldn’t drink enough. As the years went by, I came out of my comfort zone and began to enjoy it. On Carnival Monday, we throw a backyard event that we call ‘The Wine Down Party’ for people like us who love life.”
Ronnie des Vignes and his prized 1995 Firebird (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
An avid cyclist, des Vignes was a member of Madonna Wheelers that ceased operations in Canada three years ago.
To keep fit and active, he cycles around his neighbourhood, does gardening and swim in his outdoor pool.
“I have had a good life,” said des Vignes who is a member of Los Ketchos Assos parang band. “To go out as a mas’ winner is icing on the cake.”
