Second Try

British Columbia's case of the unwelcome wife took a turn for the better last week. When Dorothy Hewitt, a pretty ex-model, flew home to Jamaica in September, leaving her schoolteacher bridegroom at his job in Vancouver Island's exclusive Shawnigan Lake School for boys (TIME, Oct. 4), it seemed doubtful that she would ever return to Canada. According to Dorothy, who is one-eighth Negro, Shawnigan Lake's Headmaster G. P. Kaye had asked her to leave rather than embarrass the school by remaining as a faculty wife. John Hewitt joined his wife in Jamaica, and sent a letter of resignation to Kaye.

The case created a sensation in British Columbia and in Jamaica, where Dorothy's father, Noel Frederick Holtz, is accountant general of the Jamaican government. The Jamaican House of Representatives called upon its government to protest to Ottawa. Dorothy received a stream of sympathetic messages from Canadians, and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation said it would help find John Hewitt a job in Canada.

Heartened by the quick turn of events, the Hewitts announced last week that they would return to British Columbia. "After the wholehearted and spontaneous support shown to us by the Canadian people . . . we feel that there is nothing 'Canadian' about the incident," Dorothy explained. "We just want to be allowed to put all this unhappiness behind us."

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