WITH the passing early yesterday of Marie de Garis, Guernsey has lost a treasured – and irreplaceable – symbol of its past.

More than that, this indefatigable protector of island heritage and guardian of its language was in so many ways the roots of its past.

Thanks to her tireless efforts, however, she has left a legacy of hope for the future of the Guernsey French she loved and that, for so many years, was so ignored.

The enormity of what this country girl from St Peter’s achieved is also under-appreciated except in the circles in which she flourished.

Born in 1910, she was a child when the First World War broke out but would have known of the wholesale death visited on the Guernseymen who fought in the trenches and the effects that had on the island’s then native tongue.

Just 22 years later, after hostilities had begun again, an entire generation of children were removed from daily exposure to their mother tongue because of the evacuation. On their return, the schools system did not recognise – could not recognise because of a shortage of Guernsey French-speaking teachers – the value of that which had evolved over the centuries.

Worse, patois, as it was dismissively called, was widely regarded as peasant-speak and something actively to be discouraged. Almost overnight, that which defines any distinct ethnic community, its own living, vibrant language, died.

Marie de Garis was among the few who cared and, despite the backdrop of a war-torn community wanting to look to the future, she harvested the words of the past lest they died completely.

It was a labour of love and it was perhaps more successful than she could have imagined. While there were – are – others who have fought the same battle to preserve that cultural identity, Mrs de Garis was the effective figurehead of the campaign.

Thanks to that effort, there is a much greater appreciation of what was so nearly lost and what still needs to be done to preserve the island’s native language.

And that is a fitting tribute to a true daughter of Guernsey.