Sian Rhys - Author

The touching slow-burning journey from being a displaced and apprehensive 8 years old girl uprooted from her Welsh-speaking community in Criccieth into a genuinely proud and affectionate product of her adopted home town of Rhyl, was movingly conveyed by guest speaker Sian Rhys in a talk at Faenol Fawr. Introduced by Past President Gareth Wynne Jones, the speaker, a retired teacher and mother of three, took her audience through a myriad of experiences since finding herself growing up in the busy, brassy resort, famous as a Sunday School trip venue, with all its concomitant ingredients of slot-machines, fairgrounds, ice cream stalls and kiss-me-quick hats. Becoming detached from the predictability and stability of her former environment when her family moved to live in Windsor Street off Rhyl’s West Parade, presented real challenges in such an unfamiliar environment, she confessed. But the decision she took a few years ago to write a fictional book entitled Hafan Deg (Fair Haven), centred on her family’s life around the outbreak of World War 1 and particularly her Taid’s journey from South Wales to Rhyl and his double medal-winning service in the distinctive Welsh Regiment, founded by Lloyd George, had broadened her realisation of the town’s many achievements and attributes. Not least among these was the establishment of the first Welsh medium secondary school in Wales, on the site of the former Epworth College on Rhuddlan Road, Rhyl. The warm vote of thanks given by Past President Geraint Griffith paid tribute to the speaker’s outstanding literary and oratorical skills in painting with such profound clarity and sensitivity the picture of her own and her family’s life in a changing and challenging world. Her powerful talk had encapsulated many memorable facets of Rhyl in times past and endearingly conveyed her clear recognition of Rhyl’s diversity and innate virtues as a haven for us all.