THE latest recipient of the Barron Trophy, the lifetime achievement award issued by the Highlands and Islands Press Awards, has just been made a chieftain of his local Highland Games.
Sixty-five year-old Willie Morrison is to be chieftain of the Durness Highland Gathering this summer.
After graduating from the Scottish College of Commerce in Glasgow, Willie entered journalism with D.C. Thomson at the company’s Sunday Post office in Glasgow in 1966. Later that year, he returned to the Highlands as the Inverness-based reporter with the People’s Journal until 1981 when he moved to Edinburgh to work for the National Trust for Scotland.
He had spells with the Alloa Advertiser and Lothian Courier before again heading back for the Highlands, in 1984, on the North Star. In 1989, Willie joined Aberdeen Journals to set up and edit the Dingwall-based East Ross Herald & Post.
He became the Press and Journal’s Dingwall-based reporter in 1991. He edited the North Star for three years from June 2002 and then had a spell with the Inverness Courier before retiring last year.
Said Willie: “I’m very honoured indeed to have been invited to be chieftain. The first Durness Highland Games I remember attending were those of 1949. It was a wet day – so what’s new?”
