He was diminutive in size, but for the more than 20,000 strong St. Francis Xavier Credit Union members who came to know him as their General Manager, Vicente Canul was their Giant, the main pillar that kept the second largest credit union in Belize afloat.

On Saturday of last week, 59 year old Vicente Canul, General Manager and founding member of the union lost his valiant battle with pulmonary fibrosis. The sometimes controversial Canul who had his own fights with the ‘powers that be' showed his true grit in 2007, when he defied an amendment passed in the House of Representatives that same year, which gave the Registrar of Credit Unions definitive powers to assume management of credit unions who it deems is suffering from liquidity or other financial problems.

It is said that the amendment was aimed directly at St. Francis Xavier Credit Union. Canul co-founded the Credit Union along with Father James Walsh, S.J., back in 1979. It started out with a handful of members and a mere Two Thousand dollars worth of deposits. Today, St. Francis Xavier boasts more than Twenty Thousand members and assets worth more than Forty Million dollars. Canul is survived by his wife, Isidra and four daughters and a son Elvis Canul, who has followed in the footsteps of his father, and now manages the San Pedro Branch of the St. Francis Xavier Credit Union.