Why historic guns didn’t go on display
I read with interest the article in last week’s Blairgowrie Advertiser about the possible return of two historic guns to the town.
The two guns that are in storage at Fort George are both the Blair guns.
The reason they didn’t go on display is that in most towns they were put beside the war memorials.
I believe two of the Blair councillors had lost sons during World War I so they said they were not going beside our memorial.
The Rattray one which was on display at Rattray Common was advertised for sale but there doesn’t appear to be a record of the sale.
Some people remember a cannon being down in the Davie Park when we were young.
I personally don’t remember it but other people from Davie Park Place, Macdonald Crescent and Ashgrove Terrace do. After that nobody seems to know what happened to it. Blairie reader and member of the Rotary Club of Blairgowrie, Liz Mason, took this picture of the purple crocuses planted by the group with Blair in Bloom last year at the Wellmeadow.
The Rotary Club of Blairgowrie purchased and planted a number of purple crocus corms in support of the Rotary Foundation’s Purple4Polio campaign.
The purple crocus is a symbol of Rotary’s efforts to eradicate polio throughout the world, representing the purple dye used to mark the finger of a child who has been immunised.
And since the Rotary programme started in 1985, there has been a 99.9% reduction in polio cases, although it remains endemic in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
This year, as well as buying more purple crocus corms, members of Blairgowrie Rotary Club have also purchased Purple4Polio jam. Once empty the jars will be filled with loose change to put towards the Purple4Polio campaign.