MEMBERSHIP MATTERS

Waterway Recovery Group - We're helping to give them "The Right Tools for the Right Job"

SCARS has been able to rely on the Waterway Recovery Group right from the start of its Work Parties - equipment and volunteers have always been readily available to us. We're paying them back a little by responding to the Appeal they've launched under the above title, and will be presenting them with a cheque for £250 when we go to the IWA National Waterways Festival on the Thames at Beale Park over the August Bank Holiday weekend. If anyone wants to add to that sum, please send your contribution to our Treasurer, Cynthia Greenall (address in About Us), and we'll add it to the cheque we present.

SCARS welcomes the following new Members :-

Mike & Cath Turpin Hoylake
Steven Pugh St Helens
Arnold Harpin Warrington
Jan & Stuart Davidson Warrington
Lynn Knowling Warrington
David M Sumner Stockport
Ian Gee Warrington
Frank Smith Widnes

In Memoriam: Dr Roger Windle Pilkington 1915 - 2003

Roger Pilkington died in France on May 5th. As a boy this younger son of the Pilkington Glass family saw coal barges on the Sankey in the dying days of the trade before the canal was cut short at Earlestown in 1931. Unfortunately he was not around to save it from complete closure 40 years later. As his father and eldest brother were both on the Board of the Company, and only two family members were permitted to be on the board at any one time, he had to look for a career elsewhere. He took himself down south for a career firstly in genetics, and then with the London Missionary Society, becoming its president in 1962, and he wrote religious books. In the meantime, he bought an ex-Navy launch, Commodore, and thus began his other life - touring, and writing about his travels around the waterways of Western Europe in a series of 21 books entitled "Small Boat...". As he went along, he became an early member of the IWA, took part in campaigns to save threatened waterways, and accidentally achieved the restoration of a Swedish canal. His religious books don't tell of his waterways output (including seven children's books), and vice versa.

Even though he began his waterways' writing in the 1950s, his books are still in demand. They were never written to be guides to the waterways, but they graphically conveyed the adventure of travel, and the spirit of the places he went through. He will be remembered as an accomplished all-rounder in science, religion, folklore, social welfare, and waterways. Unfortunately, we never did get round to asking him what he thought of our efforts to restore the Sankey...

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