Community activist
Born: April 24, 1929;
Died: June 3, 2015.
Sheila Gunn, who has died aged 86, was a community activist who spent almost her entire life working for the good of her local community in Caithness. She chaired the Caithness Voluntary Group until shortly before her death, she was a director of the Caithness Partnership and helped establish Wick's Braehead Centre, where she was the day care facility's first manageress and for 40 years in her village, she was secretary of the Staxigoe Hall committee.
After schooling in the (now closed) village primary and at Wick High, she had a widely varied career, but she will be best remembered for her many volunteering activities locally as well as running a successful boarding house/B&B business in her family home at Papigoe Cottage.
There she often accommodated policemen posted to Wick and foresters from all over the UK, several of whom travelled long distances to attend her funeral service.
Sheila Macdonald was born in 1929 in Staxigoe and was adopted as an infant by Peter and Joan Macdonald. The family lived in a house adjacent to Staxigoe Hall. It overlooked historic Staxigoe Harbour where, in the 18th century, the biggest industry the Highlands has ever seen was established: the catching and salt-curing of herring for export.
To Sheila Gunn and those of her generation, the once-busy little port with its small pebble beach proved a wonderful childhood playground. One of her first jobs was working as a teenager in the John O'Groats House Hotel. This was followed by a spell childminding for a couple in Argyll.
She then did shop work in Wick and particularly enjoyed working there in the outlet in the run-up to Christmas as it sold toys and was often filled with children looking expectantly at all the delights.
In 1955, she married Bill Gunn from Keiss, another fishing village nearby on the east coast of Caithness. Bill was a pipe-fitter at the Dounreay nuclear plant (Caithness's main employer) where he was awarded the British Empire Medal for his service. Sadly Bill, by then a self-employed plumber/heating engineer, passed away in 1987 at the comparatively early age of 58. They had three children.
Mrs Gunn was an amateur dramatics enthusiast and a member of Staxigoe Players and, with her two daughters at primary school age, she established the first troupe of Brownies in the village, and was Staxigoe's Brown Owl over many years.
Among her other jobs was serving motorists in a filling station and working in a beer glass capacity testing facility in Wick. It had been set up by the local council after the then Caithness Glass factory in Wick had won a substantial order to make thousands of promotional crystal half-pint beer mugs for the Guinness brewing company. Every single one had to be certified as having the correct capacity before the Crown mark was sand-blasted on to it.
Mrs Gunn's Papigoe Cottage boarding house, where she was assisted over many years by her natural mother Maggie, was a home-from-home to many people who had moved with their work to East Caithness or were involved in contracts there, as well as tourists.
A capable cook, her traditional evening meals, often using her garden-grown vegetables, were highly regarded by her guests, many of whom recommended her hospitality to colleagues and formed lengthy friendships.
She was a keen supporter of the Cats Protection League and cared for literally dozens of feral cats over the years at Papigoe Cottage, usually training them as household pets and then finding homes for them.
She is survived by her daughters Pat and Sheila and son Tom and her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was pre-deceased by her brother Magnus and half-sister Ruby.
Bill Mowat
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