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The Mayor's Office 1998-2007
  The Mayor's Office: Garry Moore 1998-2007

Air Crash Memorial Service

Tuesday 17th June 2003

I greet you all today, not just as Mayor of Christchurch, but representing the other Mayors and people of Canterbury, and all the Mayors from areas around New Zealand served by Crop & Food Research.

I must note in particular the Mayor of Selwyn and the people of Selwyn who have been hugely affected by the tragedy suffered by such an important institution within their district.

This is a small city, in a small country, and tragedies like this accident have a big impact on our society.

Tragedy and grief is always a profound reminder of the woeful limits of language to meet some situations. It has always been so.

In this setting it is perhaps apt to share with you how the English author and theologian, CS Lewis, reacted after he lost his late-blooming love, his wife, to cancer.

As one of the leading spiritual thinkers of the age, people held great hopes for how he would deal with his loss.

An Archbishop said to him after the service that the depth and strength of his faith must have been a great consolation.

It is reported that Lewis had the courage to reply..."No...it's a terrible mess.''

It was a response that had an amazing ring of honesty, courage and realism, in trying to voice the language of grief.

Our own recent tragedy has again provided a reminder of how Canterbury is a close community that shares many major experiences, good and bad.

In recent days we have all felt firstly for the families of those who lost their lives, and for those who survived, with lives that will have been altered forever.

The loss inside those immediate families and the whanau who fan out from that hub of loss will have been profound.

Then there are their extended families - the loss to the people of the academic and broader community of Lincoln, the shattered colleagues throughout Canterbury, New Zealand, and indeed the world, the friends of this extended family, the client groups, and the many, many people who knew those who have so swiftly gone from us.

The aviation industry, part of the life-blood of this province, also stands silent in its grief.

It would be utterly presumptuous to suggest to those close to those we have just lost that we can feel anything remotely like what you are feeling.

It has been one of the more shocking aspects of this accident, that we have so swiftly lost so many who offered so much.

What we can do here today is publicly thank these people, now gone, for what they have done, professionally and as partners, parents, siblings and friends.

We have also to thank their families for their loved one's contributions to our lives and the life of our community.

All loss is hard to deal with.

Losses such as this, of some of our best and brightest, also forces us to reflect on what they saw and loved while they were amongst us.

In the nature of their work they combined the best of our old rural excellence and skill with the skills and ability to move aspects of this tradition into the forefront of the modern world. In a professional sense they were pioneers of another phase of our economic and social growth.

They were people who saw the beauty of what we have here. They chose to enjoy and delight in the superb natural prosperity that is still intact here, and to add to the quality of life in our amazing country.

They were very much part of the reason that we have got and retain such a wonderful country.

At a time such as this the best we can do is to show our sympathy and support for those left behind.

We can also make it a time to reflect on the good things about our lives and how we all need to keep in mind the frailty and swiftness of life.

Perhaps today we could ourselves take the time to tell our loved ones that we do love them. To hold our children and cherish our old.

Perhaps above all else resolve to keep some focus on the day we are in.

I would like to conclude with a Sanskrit proverb:

Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendour of action,
The glory of power -

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.


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