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Guernsey's Bailiff has written to every household in the island, ahead of Liberation Day - urging us all to reflect on the "true meaning of freedom".
Sir Richard Collas will shortly retire from his role as the island's 'senior public citizen' - but before that he took the time to assure everyone that even during lockdown, the message of the Liberation stands firm.
Dear Fellow Islander,
May 9th is and always will be a very special day for us all. This year, the 75th anniversary was to have been an extra special celebration which we had been looking forward to and planning for some considerable time. The island would have been full with relatives and friends who live elsewhere returning to join in the festivities. Town and he seafront would have been packed, the cavalcade would have been the biggest for many years and there would have been a carnival atmosphere that we would have remembered for years to come.
Sadly, May 9th 2020 will be a Liberation Day like no other but for all the wrong reasons. However, that will not prevent us from making it special. I am grateful to the members of the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture and their officers for all the work which they have done to create a revised programme. It means that, within the restrictions with which we must all comply, there are things which we can do and join in with collectively.
This year we will have time to reflect on the true meaning of freedom. We now have a better appreciation of what it meant to islanders to be liberated as we look forward anxiously to the lifting of lockdown. Today we stay in contact through the internet, their only contact with the outside world was through short, occasional Red Cross messages. Those of us who were born after the War ended cannot appreciate what it was like to have suffered nearly five years of occupation and to be near starvation. We must give thanks that even in these difficult days we are not suffering as they did.
This Liberation Day we will think not only of those who saved and liberated us in 1945 but also of those who are working to save us now. I am sure that as a community we will come together to show our appreciation and gratitude to everyone who is working tirelessly and selflessly to maintain our essential services, to keep us safe and to save our lives. My heart goes out to them all.
I wish you and your family good health as we look forward to emerging from the current crisis safe and healthy and with an even stronger sense of our much-admired community spirit and of all the values which we so often have taken for granted.
Enjoy the events on Liberation Day and may we soon be free to socialise once again and to enjoy our "Sarnia, dear homeland, gem of the sea, island of beauty", in the words of Sarnia Cherie, our anthem.
Finally, I thank Guernsey Post for delivering this letter to every island home.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Richard Collas
