Isle of Canna – a view from the harbour

Our annual maintenance programme has been put on hold as contractors cannot get out to the island. If anything breaks down we have to call on our own resources to get by. Fortunately, as a community we have a wide range of skills available and we work together to solve problems as they arise.

Essential pier infrastructure repairs are now on hold until the pandemic is over, but these need to be carried out before next winter’s inevitable storms. It’s critical to the island’s survival that the pier and harbour are in good condition, as they’re the only means of servicing the island.

Canna House is due major renovation works in preparation for its reopening to the public, which has had to be delayed under the current circumstances. This is a blow to the island but we’re confident that time will be caught up. Once completed, it will be a tremendous achievement and will showcase the work of folkorists John and Margaret Campbell, who left the island to the Trust. The collections are of international importance and richly deserve to be accessible to visitors and researchers in years to come.

Getting our rubbish off the island is proving a challenge. We rely on Highland Council to send new skips out to Canna and a mixture of weather-related ferry cancellations and travel restrictions have hampered this.

After such a bad winter our unmetalled road has suffered and we’re waiting for a good dry spell so that islander Murdo Jack and his mini-excavator can regrade the track. During the storms, tonnes of seaweed were washed up all over the road, which had to be removed by hand as a major community exercise. The pier also suffered, with a tonne of sand and gravel covering it.

In times like these we rely heavily on the internet as our main means of communication with the outside world, as we have no mobile phone coverage on the island. We’re lucky to have a local network that covers the Small Isles; if the connection is lost we’re all adept at replacing pieces of hardware with the support of Ian Bolas of Hebnet (based on Rum).

In the event of a medical emergency, we have to rely on the coastguard helicopter from Stornoway or the Mallaig lifeboat. The helicopter can get to Canna in around 30 minutes and have a casualty or patient in hospital in Fort William in under 15 minutes.

We get excellent support from the Trust management and staff from Balnain House in Inverness, who keep in regular contact with the community.

Despite everything, we’re carrying on our lives and work as usual and are a very resilient community. Work at the harbour goes on, with the slipway needing cleaned of algae and weed. My reporting to CalMac and the Trust also continues, as do all the usual maintenance checks.

The harbour still needs to be ready to respond to a marine emergency or unexpected event. Checking for rats is an ongoing responsibility for myself and the island rangers. Canna is the only one of the Small Isles which is rat-free after a major eradication exercise carried out by the Trust in 2006. But the risk of a single rat escaping from a visiting vessel is ever-present.

Naturally, we’re all looking forward to the end of this pandemic and getting our lives back to normal. Hopefully we’ll be able to welcome visitors to the island before the end of the season, as the income they provide is much needed by the island businesses and the Trust.

As the person who is usually the first point of contact for all visitors to Canna, I’m particularly looking forward to welcoming back our many repeat visitors. Especially the yachts that come back year after year to enjoy what is one of the best anchorages on the west coast and, of course, Canna’s unique and beautiful scenery.