Remembering the Chief-Chris Surtees 1959-2024

Of course, like everyone else in Balmacaan and Lewiston, the Wing Centre was aware that Chris was not well. He’d been in hospital and the outlook wasn’t good - but he was due back home where he would get some time among his own people. But it was not to be - and what makes his passing more of a shock is the fact that we had seen him down at Blairbeg not that long ago. He was on crutches and told us he had a sore back and was due to go in to hospital to have it checked out but he was the same old Chris - the wee smile, the joke, shaking his head about the team struggling- we all can relate to that.

Whatever happened, the Wing Centre was over at Lovat watching the Glen in the MOWI North division when at the start of the second half there was a minute’s silence.

 “Who is that for?” he heard a spectator ask. That was when the Wing Centre first learned that Chris Surtees had passed away - and it was a shock. Later that afternoon in Drum at the Cabers match there was another minute’s silence and inevitably the mind went back over Chris’s links to shinty and football and since this blog leans towards shinty it is appropriate to note Chris as a player from his schooldays. He played in the Glen team as a keeper and also in the claret of Strathglass for a season or two in the 80s.

Chris played for the Glen in the Sutherland Final of 1987 and later had a spell in management with Glenurquhart when in September 2016, he took us to the final of the Strathdearn against Lochcarron at Castle Leod.  

More recently a couple of seasons back he stepped forward in a supporting role to help his old friend Allan Macleod in managing Strathglass. Back in the old Blarmor days he had worked with Al as well as pub owner and former Glen player  Graham Young- and of course the ubiquitous Dave the Chip .

Chrissie’s funeral on Monday June 17^th  2024 at Kilmore was a large one. He had requested that those attending the funeral wear their sporting club colours and shinty and football tops made the church a brighter place on such a solemn occasion. The presence of a guard of honour was touching. Players representing Strathglass and Glenurquhart in their club colours and holding camans lined both sides of the path leading from the front door of Kilmore to the new graveyard as Kinlochshiel’s Donald Nixon played a lament on the pipes at the head of the procession.

In fact, the crowd was so big that the cortege had reached the graveside before many of the mourners following it had even reached the entrance of the cemetery. Such was the nature of the high regard in which he was held by both communities that the collection taken in his memory at the service amounted to £2141-a sum which will go to the Highland Hospice Sunflower Home Care Team.

The photos above of Chris just capture him as he was- full of craic and joy- its a good way to remember him

It was such an unexpected passing that it took the village by surprise with Chris just 65 years of age – and now the thoughts of everyone in the club and in the wider community are with his wife Trish and his daughter Debbie and the wider family.

(Thanks go to the Surtees family, Neil Paterson and Allan Macleod for the use of the photographs)