Maureen Guild, a former teacher at Forthill Primary School, Broughty Ferry, and a dedicated SNP activist, has died aged 80.
As a child, she was Dux of St John’s High School and a Leng Silver Medal winner in music before beginning teacher training.
After a short spell living in Canada, Maureen returned to Dundee and took up her post at Forthill where she remained for the rest of her career.
Together with her husband, Ken, a former Dundee City Council leader, she formed a strong political partnership, campaigning for the SNP.
Maureen began life in Solihull but was adopted by a Dundee couple. In later life, she managed to track down her natural parents and developed a good relationship.
She was born in 1943 in the Midlands to a Polish cavalryman and a Welsh-Irish mother.
At the age of two she was adopted by John and Winnie McCluskey of Dundee and grew up in a happy home in the Blackness area.
She went to St Joseph’s Primary, St John’s High School, and then Lawside Academy before her college education.
Maureen began teaching, married, had a daughter Gillian, and spent two years in Ontario where her husband was working.
When the couple separated, Maureen and Gillian returned to Scotland and set up home in Morar Place, Broughty Ferry.
Teaching, family and politics
She resumed teaching, at Forthill, had a busy life as a single mother, forged new friendships and became involved in the SNP.
It was through politics that she met Ken and the couple married in the Chaplaincy at Dundee University on December 27 1985.
Together, the couple began to piece together details of Maureen’s early life in Solihull.
She had known from the age of 10 she had been adopted but with the support of Ken she searched records and managed to track down her mother who was living in Bradford-upon-Avon and a meeting was arranged.
It went well and Maureen discovered that after the war, her father, Michael, had tracked down her mother Beatrice, married her and tried in vain to get Maureen back.
Knowing she had been loved by her natural parents as well as her adoptive parents, gave Maureen a huge amount of inner peace and she stayed in touch with her natural parents until they died.
Throughout Ken’s career as a councillor and council leader, Maureen accompanied him at many high profile events including to a dinner with the Queen in the council chambers in 2016.
A cat lover and keen bridge player, Maureen, who had been living with vascular dementia in later life, died peacefully on February 2 2024.
You can read the family’s announcement here.
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