The Life of John Lorne Campbell of Canna by Ray Perman
S coma uair no a`it’ ar n-eug dhuinn
’S greadhnachas gun fheum ar to`rraidh*
Few of us like to contemplate our own deaths and the first thing anyone noticed about Donald MacInnes was how full of life he was. It was impossible to be down in his company. Read more
Without Magda Sagarzazu, who has died after a long fight against cancer, I would not have become an author. Read more
Change can be painfully slow. A new conservation campaign, the Our Seas Coalition, is calling for trawlers to be banned from fishing within three miles of Scotland’s shoreline. Almost 90 years ago John Lorne Campbell was campaigning for sustainable fishery in Scottish waters.
Decades ahead of his time, John – the man who gave his island to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 – saw trawling as a threat to sustainability. Now, almost 25 years after his death, the NTS is part of a campaign to reinstate a three-nautical-mile ban which was lifted in 1984.
Previously extinct, the Large Blue butterfly has enjoyed its best summer for many years. A report in The Guardian stirs a memory of a much earlier sighting of the rare Maculinea arion in the unlikely setting of the Hebrides, which John Lorne Campbell diligently exposed as a fraud.
Another stormy summer solstice stirs memories. Nine years ago John Lorne Campbell’s body was returned to the Island of Canna for burial in the woodland he had planted near Canna House. That much was planned well in advance but like many island stories it had taken unexpected twists and turns on a long journey home from Italy. Read more
I have been passing Muck on the ferry for more than 30 years, but never managed to set foot on it until recently. It is such a lovely island and such a vibrant community, I wish I had landed years ago.
Muck is half the size of Canna, but has managed to maintain its population at around 40 for fifty years – whereas Canna’s has halved in that time. The flexible attitude of the MacEwan family who own it, is a large part of the reason. If someone wants to do something – build a house, keep stock, start a business – the answer is generally ‘yes,’ with no demand for extra rent. Read more
How delighted John Lorne Campbell would have been to find – nearly 20 years after his death and more than 30 after first publication – that his book Canna, The Story of a Hebridean Island, is still in print. Read more
This year brings the tenth anniversary of the death of Margaret Fay Shaw, surely one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century, and a life – and a life’s work – worth celebrating. Read more
I was born in Islington – a very different place in 1947 than it is now – but I had never been particularly proud of the fact until I heard Alistair Moffat at the Lennoxlove Book Festival, talking about his new book Britain’s Last Frontier, A Journey Along the Highland Line. The London borough, he told us, played a big part in the success of the whisky industry. Read more
It was very fitting that A Little Bird Blown Off Course, the musical tribute to Margaret Fay Shaw devised and performed by Fiona Mackenzie, should have premiered on South Uist, the island where she started her work and her lifelong love of the Hebrides, and finished its first run on Canna, the island which was her home for 70 years. Read more