HERE WE ARE - Key Persons
Alastair Fraser began with Our Power as a lorry driver in 2017. He immediately fitted into the Here We Are world. Without him we wouldn't be able to operate as we do, when in 2019 we were able to buy the larger lorry we needed a driver with a HGV licence and here was Alastair. He like John Smart continued all through lockdowns to deliver chips.
Alice Beattie It is no exaggeration to say that without Alice Beattie, Here We Are would not be here. Until the last couple of meetings she had never missed one, from the outset in 1998. She has brought to Here We Are inspired ideas, imagination, her experience of Cairndow over the last 80 years and competence in any project she has taken on. The folders on so many local subjects that are displayed around the centre are a tribute to this. However, it is her (elegant) handwritten records of each of the 103 houses, from their earliest record in the census, also names of those who lived there and their occupation: that has formed the bedrock on which Here We Are has been able to build so many initiatives.
Celine McIntyre is a committee member and more! It is due to her initiative and tenacity that we now have the path that links the village to the Clachan site, via the head of the loch. She dug out the feasibility study that had been done some 15 years ago and bit by bit persuaded SNH to fund it, and all the necessary agents to enable it to happen. No easy task.
Taking up the Community Action Plan of 2015, she is setting about further development.
Colin Stevenson we were fortunate that when Colin Stevenson retired from the Paddle Wheel in Inveraray he was willing to come to Here We Are and to play host at weekends Comments in our visitors' book like "lovely chat and very interesting" indicate that he enjoys explaining the centre to visitors.
Fiona Campbell joined us in April 2019. Since then she has worked alongside Dot. How lucky we were. It was she, along with Dot, who secured the grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for The Here We Are Story - the website, the digitalising and archiving of all our past and present work, so that the information is available on line, and is recorded for the future, making this an example to others. Since then, she has worked alongside Dot. She always comes up with good, new ideas, and is a first class researcher.
Helen MacRaild for many years Helen has been our reliable centre manager and in overall charge of Here We Are's office administration, day to day book-keeping, the meeting room bookings and the little shop selling stationery, postcards, maps etc. In addition to all those previous duties she is now in charge of the Post Office. We managed to save the Cairndow PO, while many local POs have closed. So far we have determinedly continued to subsidise it as a local service for two mornings a week.
Jim McMillan Miraculously in 2012 we were able to scoop up Jim when the Royal Bank of Scotland was closing its local branches. He now gives a morning (in fact much more) to The SJ Noble Trust and to Here We Are. His experience in the banking world is endlessly useful as is his knowledge of and commitment to community matters. Now it's hard to imagine how we managed without Jim
John MacDonald is chair of Here We Are, a director of Our Power and of the Merk Hydro. He chairs out meetings with assurance and humour. He is now semi-retired from Cairndow Builders, the company he ran for many years. However, he does innumerable jobs for Here We Are, like turning the disabled toilet into the archive room. And he volunteers at Our Power with chipping and delivering. And overall, his diplomacy and good cheer keep us ticking over.
John Smart has run our chipping business from the beginning. This involves ordering timber, chipping and delivering, and the company has thrived despite the hazards of unreliable machinery and snow and ice. Unruffled he deals with issues over slivers among the chips (very rare these days) and last minute panic calls for deliveries. He worked all through lockdowns to ensure customers had their heat.
Lorna Watt For many years it was Lorna and Christina who together struggled with funding applications. Now she master-minds the day-to-day books for Our Power and the Merk, as well as the cash flows and the budgets, and liaises with the accountants for all three companies. She is secretary of the Merk LLP. She is the Manager of Our Power keeping an eye on timber stocks and delivery demands. It is due to Lorna's commitment and confidence in the enterprise that Our Power has weathered many fraught years and grown to be the well-regarded business it is today.
Dot Chalmers a long time ago it was Dot who created our Adlib archive of photos and documents. From that she went on to project manage ‘Our Houses: Their Stories'. This involved working closely with her mother Alice Beattie, in whose head was a storehouse of the needed information. It also involved liaison with the Heritage Lottery Fund. From that experience she went on to master mind the data base of the Glen Fyne gazetteer. And now is in charge of the major project - The Here We Are Story - funded by Heritage Lottery Fund.
Roy Foster Roy is the older brother in CR Foster Ltd, our partners in the Merk Hydro scheme. He and his brother Martin built and run their own successful hydro schemes at Achnamara. More recently they bought large schemes in the North Highlands. They are highly regarded in the contemporary Hydro Electric world. Without Roy's vision the Merk Hydro would not have been possible. Without his loyalty we would feel less secure.
He is a director of Our Power and his financial acumen and common sense is often called on.