Three Island residents named in New Year Honours list

Sat, 01 Jan 2022

Three people from the Isle of Man have been recognised in the 2022 New Year Honours List.

 

Colin Leather from Castletown has been awarded an MBE for his service to the community.

Colin has dedicated the majority of his life to Castletown, striving to improve the town for its residents.  As one of the Island’s longest standing chairmen, he has been Chairman of the Castletown Commissioners on six occasions, and was also Secretary of Castletown Festival for 30 years.  On behalf of the Castletown Chamber of Trade and Commerce, he managed the Castletown Markets, held in Castletown Market Square from 1979 to 2011 and is always passionately promoting and helping businesses relocate to Castletown.  For 20 years he has helped to raise funds for the Southern 100 Club and has not been deterred by his own serious illnesses. His drive and commitment have seen the transformation of the Market Square from a car park into a community space, which has made a difference for visitors as well as residents. 

 

Bernadette Williams is awarded an MBE for her long service to the Isle of Man and the Royal British Legion.

In her work for the Royal British Legion (RBL) and Tynwald, Bernadette Williams has represented the Isle of Man, both on-island and in Great Britain, for nearly 40 years.  She was a member of the RBL Women’s Section from 1983 to 1995, and has been a Standard Bearer for the Isle of Man County and North West Region and won the Great Britain Standard Bearer title for five consecutive years. She has been Standard Bearer for numerous state occasions, and throughout this time, she has taken the time to train junior Standard Bearers to her exacting standard, some of whom have emulated her success.  On retiring from ceremonial duties with the Royal British Legion, she was appointed Sword Bearer for Tynwald, a duty she has carried out for 25 years.  

 

Alex Townsend has been awarded the British Empire Medal for his services to education on the Island.

In the 1990s, Alex Townsend came up with the innovation of converting a single-decker bus into a mobile classroom to teach the island’s primary school children about creative use of computers. With the support of Manx Telecom and the Isle of Man Government, the Computerbus was launched in 1998, led by Mr Townsend until 2020.  Described by an Apple spokesperson as ‘stroke of brilliance’, Mr Townsend and the Computerbus have helped tens of thousands of Manx pupils learn critical ICT skills, including design work, filmmaking and code, and have led the island’s young people into creative careers all over the world. In 2014, in celebration of 30 years since the first Apple Mac was released, Mr Townsend was recognised alongside 29 other ‘pioneers’ across a range of backgrounds and industries, who had made a “profound impact” in the field of computing.

 

 

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