Lochaber Times, From our Files: February 19 2026

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
Thursday February 22 2001

Cyber surfers set as café goes online

Caol’s new cyber café went online last week opening up the internet to many of the area’s young residents.

The £63,000 project comprises a five-computer internet room plus coffee and snack bar at the fully-refurbished Caol Youth Centre.

The ‘Crazy Café’ was opened by Highland Council’s Head of Community Education Fraser MacPherson who worked at the centre for four-and-a-half years.

Six youth centre members and Community Education worker Andy Jackson have spent two years on the project.

Mr MacPherson praised their work. He said: "To see the changes in the building and the potential it has is fantastic.

"The fact the young people have been so instrumental in these changes is tremendous."

The centre will be used by youth club members in the evenings and will be open to the public during the day.

FIFTY YEARS AGO
Thursday February 19 1976

Skye man could be first to own his croft

A west Skye crofter could be the first to receive a formal offer to sell him his croft under the new proposals for reform which are now before Parliament.

Asking price for the 12-acre croft owned by the Scottish Secretary is £140. This amounts to 26 times the current rent but is in line with the reform provisions of fifteen times an updated "fair" rent.

It represents a whopping reduction in the price first negotiated under the terms fixed by the former Tory Government which resulted in a price of £1,200.

However, this was to have been a once-and-for-all payment with no future requirement to share any development profit with the former landlord.

Under the new proposals any development within five years of the croft being bought will require that one-half of the profit be paid to the landlord, unless "the disposal is by way of an agricultural or crofting let".

Selling the house and garden ground is excluded from the five-year profit-sharing condition. Other conditions are that the crofter has to pay the expenses of the sale: minerals are reserved; and the existing sporting lease over the croft has to be continued.

The Scottish Secretary will pay 1p per year for 99 years to lease the sporting rights.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Saturday February 27 1926

A native of Skye

The announcement of the death of Mr John Wm. Mackenzie while still in the prime of life has brought unfeigned sorrow to all whose privilege it was to know him.

Though born in Skye, Mr Mackenzie was sprung from namely Lewis stock on both sides.

His father, Roderick Mackenzie of H.M. Customs, was a son of Donald Mackenzie of Dalbeg, while his maternal grandfather was Kenneth Ross, one of the "Men" whose influence throughout the Island in the middle of last century was so powerful and salutary.

After serving some years in the counting-house of Messrs Cooper & Coy. in Glasgow, Mr Mackenzie left for the Zambesi, where he quickly rose to a responsible position with the African Lakes Corporation.

He had many interesting experiences there including acquaintance with Cecil Rhodes’s friend, Dr. Jameson, whom he carried, malaria-stricken, from a native boat on the Zambesi and nursed back to health.

Among others whom he met and formed friendships with were F. C. Selous and Gordon Cumming, famous as travellers, hunters and naturalists.

Trophies of his own, the spoils of a few short holiday expeditions, have been housed in the Glasgow Art Galleries for many years.

He became manager of the North Charterland Company, a pioneer concern controlling thirty thousand square miles of territory in Tanganyika, which afterwards came under the aegis of the Chartered Company.

Returning home he was entrusted with a mission to examine and report on the prospects of inland trade development in connection with the proposed African Continental Railway starting eastward from Lobito Bay, south of the Congo.

He next became associated with Mr R. W. Duff in Kelantan, Malaya, as assistant manager of the Duff Development Coy., then concerned mainly with gold digging.

After a time, foreseeing that the real wealth of that state would be found in its soil, through the cultivation of Brazilian rubber, secured from the Rajah a territorial concession, but immediate arrangements for its development not being feasible he spent a couple of years in the management of a trading company on the Gold Coast.

Thereafter he returned to Kelantan, where he spent toilsome years in a trying climate, steadily working up an estate which with many others of its kind is now proving one of our nation’s most valuable assets.

He was about to start the last section of his programme of work in the East, before retiring to easier conditions of life among old friends in the homeland when in the course of a brief health trip to India he was suddenly smitten down by smallpox and died at Bombay on January 16th.

And so ended a life in which the promise of youth was richly fulfilled. With native abilities of a high order, he combined those qualities of enterprise, vision and courage which fitted him so well for the pioneer work to which his life was so largely devoted.