GENOME PROJECT-From Jamaica to Vancouver to Portugal-part 1

This article first appeared in Portuguese on February 1, 2011 in Terra Quente, a bi-monthly newspaper in Tras-os-Montes, Portugal (insert link), and in English at www.ladina.blogspot.com
Richard George Henriques, A Canadian architect in search of his roots.
Antonio J. Andrade and M. Fernanda Guimaraes
Translated and revised by mlopesazevedo and M. Fernanda Guimaraes
(the authors assert copyright)

Henriquez Partners is a prestigious architectural firm in Canada. Their most emblematic work is found in Vancouver where they are located. Some of their highrise projects form part of the panoramic of the city. Other noteworthy projects are part of urban renewal, sometimes constituting a set of buildings or even an entire block. There are also significant buildings in the arts, medicine, and scientific research. There are innovative projects, from the boldest modernism to Gothic and Neo-Classical re-creations. The firm enjoys an international reputation and has won more than a dozen awards, in particular, the Governor General's gold medal, the highest distinction in Canada, which the firm has received twice.
The firm has about 30 functionaries, headed by architect Alfred George Henriquez whose mentor and thesis advisor was the celebrated architect and historian Alberto Perez-Gomes, professor of architecture and engineering at the University of Montreal. But the founder and builder of the firm is his father, the architect Richard George Henriquez. It is the latter that is at the heart of our story, which will lead us to multiple references of a Sephardic family that left its mark in many parts of the world during several centuries. We are restricting our research to Portugal, especially the Inquisition trial records (“processos”) that can be found at the Torre do Tombo archives in Lisbon.
First, we wish to point out that the surname Henriquez was Hispanicized at the turn of the last century during the construction of the Panama canal. Therefore, for the purposes of our work, we will adopt the Portuguese spelling, Henriques, the name which connects this Jewish family to Portugal since the 15th century. Other branches of the family kept the Portuguese spelling in the diaspora.
We would also like to relate how this adventure began, yes this project, not the architectural one! Richard had been trying for two years to obtain processos from the Torre do Tombo but lack of knowledge of the Lusitanian language of Camoes hindered him, so he decided to attend in person at the archives. Richard has been making many such trips over the last 20 years to places such as the USA, Antilles, England, France, Spain, Amsterdam, wherever his ancestors led him. By chance, a Luso-Canadian lawyer referred him to Fernanda Guimaraes who practically lives at the Torre.
It was in the summer of 2008 when Richard and his wife arrived in Lisbon. There is an old saying in Portuguese, when hunger calls, the appetite strikes. In other words, at precisely the same time that Richard was looking for the processos, Fernanda was researching them. Unkowingly, Fernanda had been studying Richard`s ancestors in such dispersed places as Torre De Moncorvo, Vila Flor, Trancoso, Celorico da Beira, Mirandela, and Viseu, all places with a significant Jewish population before the forced baptism of 1497. ( All Portuguese Jews were forcibly baptized in 1497, thereafter called New Christians). Fernanda was also aware that some members of the family had fled Portugal to such places as Madrid, Bordeaux, Amsterdam and then London to escape the clutches of the Inquisition. Fernanda offered her services and Richard was pleased.
Richard George Henriques was born on February 5, 1941 in Annotto Bay on the north coast of Jamaica, within the limits of the city of Saint Mary, baptized Puerto de Santa Maria by the first Spanish colonizers. His mother's name was Essie Adeline Silvera, also Hispanicized (Silveira in Portuguese), and his father Alfred George Henriques was born in 1916. They were a typical agricultural family working on their father's estate, however Richard's father was soon drafted into the British army to help boost agricultural production during wartime. The British naval base in Kingston played a leading role in patrolling the Caribbean basin and ensuring that the Panama canal remained open.
During his tender years, Richard remembers a particularly violent storm, almost a hurricane, which destroyed the family home in which his sister, Kathleen Maye Henriques also lived. At about the same time Richard learned that his 25 year father, now a fighter pilot in the British air force had been shot down by an enemy plane over Warsaw. The death of his father coincided with the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto and must have contributed to Richard's destiny of becoming the family genealogist.
Without a father and the family home in ruins, Richard and his sister went to live with his paternal grandparents, Alfred St. Elmo Henriques, and Linda Maye Cohen Henriques, at Greenwood. Richard has fond memories from his time at Greenwood, frequent trips to the beach supervised by his aunt Rita, moonlight filled nights on the house porch with his grandfather unravelling the mysteries of life and the world, and tales of the eternal wanderings of the Jewish people, especially the Iberian Jews of Sepharad (literally land's end, ie, Portugal and Spain). Perhaps it was these nostalgic evenings and the absence of a father killed in a distant land that ignited Richard's interest in discovering his roots.
Later, Richard's mother married Francis Roy Henriques, his grandfather's brother. The family settled in Buff Bay, a small seaside city, 40 kilometres from their previous home. Richard started primary school when he was seven and has some unpleasant memories of being bullied. When he was about ten years old he decided to become an architect like his uncle Rudolph Daniel Cohen Henriques whom he got to know during summer vacations. Uncle Dossie, as Richard called him was a talented self-made man, architect, sculptor and painter. He served an architectural apprenticeship at a New York engineering firm and was soon helping build the Panama canal. Richard has fond memories of uncle Dossie's trip home to see his brother, building, sculpting, and painting, all the while doting on the young Richard. Uncle Dossie married Gwendolyn Cohen Henriques, Linda's sister and Richard's paternal grandmother. Their son, Maurice Karl Cohen Henriques graduated from architecture and engineering in 1957 from the University of Manitoba in Canada. Richard soon followed in his footsteps, and the rest is history as it is said.
Source
Howard Shubert, Geoffrey Smedley, Robert Enright, Richard Henriques, Selected Works, 1964-2005, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, Toronto, 2006