IWA FREIGHT news
OBITUARY – OLGA KEVELOS
Obituary Donald Mackinnon
Olga Kevelos died on 28th October, having suffered a stroke from which she did not regain consciousness. The daughter of a Greek financier resident in Birmingham, she was one of the ever dwindling band of trainee boatwomen who worked for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co during World War II. She was working at the Royal Observatory, but this was closed during the war and Olga was transferred to the Admiralty in Bath. Described there by her bosses as “unable to add up,” Olga was attracted to the canal life by a newspaper advertisement for female recruits, and she joined the small team in late 1943. Lack of any other evidence suggests that Olga may have trained with Daphne French, and she crewed on a number of the boats worked by ‘passed trainees’ without actually being named as captain. She therefore stayed on the boats longer than many other women. After the war she went to Paris with one of her colleagues to study. For a while after returning to Birmingham she operated a travel agency, but soon became involved with a motor cycle racer. Finding that she had a natural aptitude for racing herself, she joined several teams as their works rider. Finding the James machines “too fiddly and slow”, she progressed through A.J.S. to Norton, and it was on a Norton that she won both of her Gold Medals in International six-day trials. One of those, in 1953, was awarded in Czechoslovakia, and Olga retained links with that country until her death. She also raced in Formula 3 cars but, by 1970, she had retired to the
country and joined her brother Ray to run the Three Tuns public house in Kings Sutton, Oxfordshire. During 1978 she made two appearances on the TV programme Mastermind, where her specialist subject was Genghis Khan. Olga was one of the four former trainees who returned to Stoke Bruerne in 2008 for the unveiling of a plaque commemorating their war work. On August 19th 2009 she appeared with fellow trainees Emma Smith and Jean Peters on BBC TV’s The One Show. During the programme the ladies spent time discussing their life on the canals during the war, and about how the experience had changed their lives for ever. In the years after she retired from the Three Tuns, Olga was a formidable quiz team captain. She was still serving as a parish councillor at the time of her death, and the parish church at Kings Sutton was filled almost to overflowing with villagers and friends for a service of thanksgiving for her life on 7th November. Mike Constable
Donald Mackinnon was a stalwart of the Scottish Inland Waterways Association’s Glasgow group in the 1970s. He was always to the fore when there was hard and dirty work to be done such as clearing lock chambers or bow-hauling barges through choking weed. He was a founder member of the Forth & Clyde Canal Society when it was formed in 1980, and was again at the head of the queue when Ferry Queen was converted from an old Clyde passenger ferry into a canal trip boat. Wherever the front line was drawn, Donald was on it wielding a hammer, shovel, welding torch or a paintbrush. However, Donald did not confine himself to physical activities. He was chairman of SIWA, chairman and honorary president of the F&CCS, and he chaired the British Waterways user group meetings for some years. He represented the society on the Forth & Clyde Canal Steering Group, a committee of elected councillors that monitored the Forth & Clyde Canal Local Plan. He was adept at winning over the general public, and he gave numerous talks on behalf of the F&CCS. In organising many events of every size and type, he always had an eye to promoting the cause of canal restoration. Donald’s determination to succeed in his allotted task found a more immediate outlet in those wonderfully anarchic events – the Drambuie Marathons in the 1980s. As one half of the ‘ton-up-kids’
Phyllis May, the narrowboat in which Terry and Monica Darlington travelled the world in their ‘Narrow Dog’ books, was burnt out in a mystery boat fire in Stone. Two other boats sank in the fire on the evening of 24th November. The blaze started on board one of six craft moored together at the long-established Canal
Cruising Company yard, on the Trent & Mersey Canal. Further damage was only averted when Leo McCloskey, a Canal Cruising employee, quickly reversed the others out of the way, then jumped into the water to keep a blazing boat from drifting across the basin. Other canal residents and passers-by were pressed into
(I was the other, junior, half, and we got our name when our combined ages topped 100), he had the chance to compete and campaign at the same time by using the canals. One year we won both the Lowland and Caledonian Canal events – Donald was very proud of that. After the canal’s reopening, Donald maintained his commitment to the cause, playing a big part in fund raising for the F&CCS’s newest passenger vessel. A life lived to the full had started to catch up with him, and he was still recovering from an illness and surgery when he travelled to Germany on family business. He died there on 28th September, just two months before his 80th birthday. In losing Donald the Scottish canals have lost a true champion. As individuals we have all lost a friend, but our thoughts go to his extended family, who have lost a husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. He will be sorely missed. Guthrie Hutton
service to stop the fire from spreading further. At its peak, 25 firefighters were tackling the blaze. The cause is now being investigated by police. Terry Darlington told the local Express & Star: “It is quite ironic – the boat has survived storms, hurricanes and alligators only to burn down at its moorings while we were sat at home.”
Steve Wood
Narrow Dog burnt out in fire
12 / IWA WATERWAYS / spring 2010
News.indd 12
20/1/10 2:28:24 pm