former House Speaker David Edmund Wilkinson and Canon James Woodcock Francis.

Mr. Wilkinson was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours List.

A founder of law firm Cox and Wilkinson, he was first elected to the House of Assembly in May, 1968, representing Paget West.

He was a Cabinet Minister in the 1970s and in November, 1979, he was named as Deputy Speaker of the House and in February, 1989, was elected Speaker and remained in that post until he retired from politics at the time of the general election in 1993.

Canon Francis has been in Bermuda since 1985 after working in the US.

He was appointed Fire Department chaplain and chairman of the Human Rights Commission in 1986.

Two years later he was made chairman of the Board of Education's action team on Racial Equality and a member of the Advisory Council for the Adult School of Education. He is also a dispute arbitrator for Government.

Other awards recipients congratulated by Parliamentarians were Norma Elverine Agnes Nottingham, Donville O'Neal Yarde, Roberta Jane Amaral, Mabel Place and Joan White.

Congratulations were also sent to the principals, staff and students at Warwick Secondary, Sandys Secondary, Berkeley Institute and Southampton Glebe who held their graduation ceremonies this week.

Leslie Ann Burchall, who organised the musical event Chances '97, golfer Madeleine Joell who won the Bermuda Amateur Stroke Play Championship and veteran sailor Howard Simmons who won the West End Sailboat club's annual long distance comet race were also congratulated.

Meanwhile condolences were sent to the families of the late E. Dudley Bassett, Albion Coleman Dean, Pauline Ismay Harvey Seaman, Olga Ernestine Butterfield, Ergentine Eldridge Malvena Rochester and Alma Elizabeth Smith.