Memories of Vic Miller from Jenny Stratton
Vic worked for over thirty years for the Wilts & Berks Canal. Living in Wootton Bassett he was a key member of the local branch, active on early work parties restoring the canal in Wootton Bassett. He and John Allen dressed up in Victorian top hats when they celebrated the opening of the Templars Firs stretch.
In 1993 he began leading local authority liaison with North Wilts District Council, working with Ray Denyer. I can remember standing with Vic on the depot site in Bassett in 2004 meeting Council officers, talking about a planning application and trying to persuade a developer’s agent of the virtues of canal-side dwellings! He was at meetings with Biffa over the possibility of reinstating a canal in a narrow, reserved strip by the landfill site. Vic saw that this preparatory work was essential. I’m sad that he didn’t get to walk down that restored canal at Studley Grange when it opened just before he died.
He was a major part of the Trust’s publicity activities, working with teams representing the Trust on displays locally and far afield at major canal events. We knew he was expert with gazebos after his lifelong involvement with scouting.
In 1998 he joined the Council of Management of the Wilts & Berks Canal Amenity Group. When he retired from the Council, by that time of the Trust, he said he was ‘leaving to spend more time with my boat and my caravan’. He had had more than one canal boat, the last was Nonsuch, a trailboat, which he launched at the Waterways festival in 2002 in Wootton Bassett, and took to canals around the country. He introduced his scouting circle to boats too.
We look back fondly on the times we shared with Vic. We all agreed he was a very nice man to work with.
His Canal Trust friends joined others from his Scouting, Rotary, Probus and Castrol days with members of his family at a service at North Wiltshire Crematorium in October 2018 and at a service of Thanksgiving at St Bartholomew’s Church in November.
