MBEs for women with Sutherland connections

TWO women with Sutherland connections have been awarded MBEs in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Moira Rennie (67), who has lived in Dornoch since 2001, was given hers for services to terminally ill patients.

She became involved in hospice care after her late husband, Iain Rennie, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1985.

He was only in his mid 30s at the time and the couple, who were living in south-east England, had two small sons – Sandy (11) and Alistair eight.

Five local nurses joined forces with Mrs Rennie and the family GP to give Mr Rennie round-the-clock care at home.

Out of that grew the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home (IRHH) charity which has provided home care in the Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire areas for the past 25 years.

The charity has given more than 10,000 patients with life-limiting illnesses and their families the choice to be cared for in their own homes, supported by a callout nursing service.

In 2011, IRHH merged with another hospice charity, Grove House, to become Rennie Grove Hospice Care. Mrs Rennie was appointed co-president of the amalgamated organisation.

She said earlier this week that the honour had been “really unexpected”. She said: “This award pays tribute to the vision and nursing expertise of the past 30 years and the wonderful support given to patients and their families.”

She told us: “It was very hard to keep it a secret, although I did tell my sons!” Meanwhile, the daughter of one of the last people to leave the north Sutherland island of Eilean nan Ron was awarded her MBE for “services to heritage”.

Rosemarie MacQueen was, until last autumn, the strategic director for built environment at Westminster City Council, managing planning, transportation and regeneration in the heart of London.

As well as shaping the development of the city she has also had the opportunity to speak at conferences from New York to Tokyo, Paris and Rome – quite a contrast to her island roots.

Her mother is Kitty Ann MacQueen (nee Mackay), one of five children born on a croft on Eilean nan Ron, an island off Tongue.

A teacher, she was one of a number of people who left the island shortly before the final exodus in December 1938.

Kitty Ann was the subject of a documentary “A’ Dol Dhachaigh”, shown on BBC Alba in 2008, which told the story of her early life. She was the last teacher at the island school but on the mainland taught at Vagastie and then on the Duke of Westminster’s estate at Achfary.

Rosemarie’s father, Donald Alec MacQueen, came from Balgarva on South Uist. While in the Lovat Scouts he met and married Kitty Ann and they settled in Norfolk.

Although now 97, Kitty Ann, along with Rosemarie, will shortly be visiting the north and west to see relatives and friends in Torrisdale, Skerray and elsewhere in Sutherland.

Due to the collapse of the harbour steps on Eilean Nan Ron, Kitty Ann is unlikely to visit her island home.

Rosemarie is a member of the Highlands and Islands Society London and the Gaelic Society.

On the day of the MBE announcement she was attending a Gaelic Society event and celebrated with friends from the north-west.

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