Captain Rivers

In my remarkable and wonderful people of Cameron Highlands series…………..Today we are going to meet master mariner P.J.Rivers.

Although I have known Captain Rivers as he is popularly known for a very long time  but was generally to the point of exchanging courtesies as he walked in town doing his chores accompanied by his lovely wife.

My first close encounter with him was in the late 1990’s when the concerned local resident thought that enough was enough. They were appalled at what was happening to Camerons in the name of development .They realized the need to work together as a community to address the problems of the rapidly deteriorating environment especially the declining forests and water quality………..Both captain Rivers and I were a part of the team of founding members of REACH …A community based organization which was finally registered in 2001 (Regional Environmental Awareness Of Cameron Highlands)…..

During the course of the meetings etc , I got to know him a bit better and realized how strongly he felt for the environment and his passion to conserve Cameron Highlands . We certainly had a lot in common I was also deeply impressed by his wealth of knowledge with regards to the history of Cameron highlands and how much research and study had gone into this………

Several years later in 2011 we were doing a book for our book club in Cameron Highlands titled Jim Thompson –The unsolved mystery ……….I had heard about about Captain Rivers research on this inexhaustible topic . He had travelled far and wide in his quest to unravel the mystery of Jim Thompson and based on his research had come out with his own version of what could have happened to Jim Thompson …I invited him to the book meet held at my house. He captivated and enthralled the 12 women who had travelled from KL with his stories . We spoke about everything starting from Jim Thompson and finishing with the environment …Once again his commitment to the environmental cause is 100% and any discussion with him would be incomplete without him mentioning how appalled he was at the situation in Camerons..

As he was leaving he went out to see the view from my porch “Well the panoramic view that we get from my house is the best in Cameron Highlands …But having said that the view from your place is pretty good too. Coming from the captain I took it as a huge compliment……