Does anyone remember Janet Holm who died earlier this year? She was grounded in the outdoors and a major force for environmental action.
Janet was a keen climber and tramper from her time in university tramping clubs in the 1940s. Her honeymoon was spent climbing in the Austrian Alps and she later completed the major South Island tramping tracks, more than once. Her back country experience enabled her as an 11-year Canterbury Museum volunteer, to index their alpine photographic collection, as she recognised the peaks and passes. She was a member of the Alpine Club for 69 years.
She campaigned for Clean Air, founded in Christchurch the first Environment Centre in New Zealand, and organised the first Environmental Conference, ‘Environment 77’. Janet was behind many first environment education initiatives including local radio and TV programmes. On retiring to university in her sixties, she wrote three books on NZ history, including one on early NZ surveyors.
Janet was awarded the MBE for services to the environmental movement in 1988, the Environment Canterbury Outstanding Achievement Award in 2004 and the A.C. Rhodes Memorial Award from the Canterbury History Foundation in 2005. In 2005 she became the first woman appointed as an honorary member for the NZ Institute of Surveyors.
A Christchurch Commemoration is planned for the afternoon of Saturday 17 November (Show Weekend) please contact diana.shand@xtra.co.nz or 021 471 989 or visit https://tinyurl.com/y87uelut
