The earthquakes had a profound effect on Christchurch and on the people that live there. Many buildings were destroyed. Many of the landmarks on the skyline that we treated as normal were, unfortunately, lost—buildings like the Grand Chancellor Hotel, which in a very flat city, was often used as a bit of a bearing when you were lost in the city. To this day, I still find myself getting lost in Christchurch, not helped, of course, by its famed one-way streets within the four avenues. But the greatest loss was not the buildings, not its landmarks, but its people. There are very few families in Canterbury who didn't know someone who was lost in those Canterbury earthquakes, and my family is no different. We lost a friend of ours, Philip McDonald, an accountant from Ashburton. That initial loss was tragic, but so has been the ongoing trauma, and very few of my family and friends who lived in Christchurch or in the city at the time of the earthquake, unfortunately, still live there, having moved to places like Rolleston, Banks Peninsula, or further afield. 