Everyone in Treasure beach knew how William from h was a young man loved the area. He almost grew up between Pedro and Fort Charles. He knew people from Generations ago. It is with great sadness, that we have to tell you that William passed away in Mandeville hospital at 9:30 am on Sunday August 19th. He passed peacefully and I know he will be missed.

My sympathies to you and all who loved William. I will always remember how proud he was of his beautiful herd of goats and Button Bay.

So sorry Gladys. RIP William. met you and William only once around 2001 or 2002. I was there with Lennie when you were building the guest rooms.

We extend our condolences to you and your family, Gladys. May you find peace in remembering all the good times from the decades you spent together.

Deepest sympathies, Gladys & family.

Please, accept our deepest sympathy. Over the years we stayed at Button Bay, we very much appreciated and enjoyed William's and your hospitality. Our thoughts are with you at this time.

Dear Gladys,I am sending my heartfelt condolences to you and your family.I will miss William's smile,kind heart and sense of humor.I particularly loved the kindness and respect with which he dealt with all people as well as with all his creatures.My prayers are with you.Sincerely,JuJu

The Finlason Family - Our sincere condolences on your great loss. We know William will be sorely missed by everyone who knew him. Our prayers are with you.

Dear Gladys & the Finlason Family...it is with great sorrow that we learned about Sir William's passing from this earthly realm and a piece of the Rock that he so dearly loved and took care of.
There was a restless energy that he exhibited that settled and cooled at a place called Button Bay.

I hope that you are comforted by the quiet-direct stories and bemused smiles that William offered to friends and guests, and for me, memorably, as he did his morning routine, with fresh orange juice, submerged in your rock-ledge pool, looking in every direction at a balance in existence from the sea's horizon to the ridges of the hills behind and beyond...places that he knew well, surveyed and accepted for their ruggedness and challenges...shaped into pens, gardens, pastures, embracing coves.

How he must have loved viewing the landscape sculpted by Mother Nature into unique and phantasmal forms, and recall his own mother telling him that the stones in the sea, at his property, looked like "buttons", and hence the hopes of a contented beachfront domicile which would become Button Bay.

I reflect how William, finding the tracks of a mother turtle fanning her way to lay her eggs, on the beach for which he accepted stewardship, would gather staff to hide, protect, and disguise the hatching eggs from predators until the newborns were ready to make their dash to the sea and start journeys along currents of time and trials, not unlike those which you shared with William.
Of how when you both moved to Canada during the 1970's, how depressed William became by the climate there, and that deep loss that most every Jamaican boy has for the natural athleticism of a hearty-healthy outdoor life, kissed by a vibrant sun and an invigorating sea.
How on return to your beloved Button Bay, you had to hack away bush and brush just to find your little cottage devoured by constant, unimpeded growth.

How many people are familiar with the fact that the Finlason family was instrumental in the sub-dividing of the 3000 Acres of Ft Charles...what might be considered by some as Outer Treasure Beach, through his fathers law firm of Knowles & Finlason, where from an early age he became an Articled Law Clerk?
That was not a position that paid much back in colonial times, so that when William acquired the properties around Button Bay, by hook or by crook, he/you needed to build your first cottage almost block by block, with some lengths of rebar steel, a few bags of dry cement, until materials and money ran out, only to start building again after a few more paydays...a hardscrabble endurance for a rugged, at times laceratingly sharp karst environment.

But Gladys, it is William's musings about the moods of Jamaica and the folks drifting into his life that we loved about him and the storied settings that echoed "biblical" human srengths and frailties, including those he may have seen in himself.

Those moods would include "spells" of sensuality cast on foreigners upon relaxing on this Jamrock, discovering depths and swings of poetry in their beings that they may have never found elsewhere!

Gladys...May the Creator & the Divine find favour on your long marriage and the children you begat...of love, effort, creative energy, and may your memories of the friendships and commitments, earned and to be fulfilled, in this community endure.


O Please Come Back to Me

What in that candle's light that opened me?
What in that starry night would consume me?
Was done so wondrous right and so quickly.
What in that candle's light that opened me?

There's shadow in my sunlight, please let me see.
Nothing can help me now but Your beauty!
In gratitude and wonder I'll always be.
Nothing can help me now but Your beauty!

O please come back to me, my only friend.
O please come back to me.
O please come back to me, my heart to mend.
Your love has no beginning and has no end.

There was a dawn as soft as rosy wine.
The sun it seems to rise inside my mind.
The sky so rosy red, so still, so fine,
In stillness then your soul it spoke to mine.

O please come back to me, my only friend,
O please come back to me.
O please come back to me, our selves to blend,
Your love has no beginning and has no end.

I drank the holy waters inside your spring,
The spring became a river, why should I cling?
I felt the current take me, I had to sing.
I sang the song of All and Everything.

--by Rumi, 13th century mystic poet, who settled in Konya, Turkey, where his observance of Sufism flourished, most demonstrably in the ritual Dance of the Divine of the whirling dervishes inspired by his poetry.

hi gladys sorry to of williams passing may his soul rest in peace. was he your husband.

hi gladys sorry to of williams passing may his soul rest in peace. was he your husband.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts. William and I were married for 6 months short of 48 years.

As live moves on, Button bay will be now known as the Cove in Jamaica. It has been taken over by a charming English gentleman.

I hope to revisit Treasure Beach whenever my emotions can deal with it. Thank you all again.

Thank you Zed, it says it all.