A MEMORIAL service will be held next month to celebrate the life of a former Dorchester teenager who died in Canada.

Former Thomas Hardye School student Elliott Harty, 17, died after being thrown from his powerful motorbike after crashing into a lamppost in the Burnaby area of Vancouver last month.

He was on a life support machine following the incident, but his family took the decision to turn off the system and his organs were donated for transplant.

His grandmother Carol Davis, of Broadmayne, described him as a wonderful young man who made friends wherever he went.

Now she has organised a memorial service at St Michael's Church, Stinsford, where her husband Malcolm is organist and where Elliott was christened.

She said: "We are holding the memorial service on Saturday, August 11 at 2pm. My daughter Simone is coming over from Canada at the beginning of August for the service.

"We would like everyone who knew Elliott at the school and through other ways to come along and help celebrate his life."

Elliott spent a year at the Thomas Hardye School and played cello in the school orchestra, before moving to Vancouver with his family.

Mrs Davis added: "He made a lot of friends at Thomas Hardye School and kept in touch with them over the Internet. He has also been back to stay with them while visiting me, so we would hope that they would come along and remember him with us."

The teenager had only passed his motorcycle test about 12 days before the accident on a highway in Vancouver.

Police found his body in a ditch near to where he collided with the lamppost on the Barnet highway.

A fund has been set up in Elliott's memory at his Canadian school.