The death of John Maclnnes in June of last year severed one of the few authentic remaining links with Coll's past.

Johnny Glaic as he was affectionately known, was brought up and lived all his life in the East End. In the thirties he found work as a ghillie with the shooters who frequented the island. Apart from eighteen months road building on Tiree during the Second World War, he rarely left Coll. After the war and throughout the 1950s he was one of Coll's 4 bicycling postmen. It was onerous work on inclement days with a heavy canvas mailbag of parcels and messages as far as Caolas.

Johnny never married and after the death of his mother moved from Claic to Sorisdal. His assistance in running the MacKinnon brothers croft was welcomed as was his care for the twins, Hector and Archie, in their later years.

A visit to Sorisdal was always a memorable occasion. There were sweets and biscuits for the young, the strongly brewed tea, a dram and `the crack' for older ones. Johnny's knowledge of the East End, its' shoreline, skerries, hills and lochs was encyclopaedic.

There was no nook or cranny he did not have a name for in his native Gaelic. Ever a true Collach and east Ender, with his death another landmark has gone. lie is greatly missed by all his friends.