Remembrances

Lytton, British Columbia, like many villages, is rich with lore and spirited characters. In 1858, a Nlaka’pamux chief named Cexpen’nthlEm negotiated a treaty with invading American gold miners. Not long after, the ranchers Joe and Catherine Watkinson had the first of their eleven children, whose many descendants still call the place home. After the Second World War, Lyttonites called Doris Loring “Gramma Love” because she greeted everyone with “Hello, love.” A decade later, the Manders boys built a tree house, popular with local kids, to stash nudie mags and sweets. And then there was Dunstan “Rattlesnake Dan” Raphael, who in the 1960s “yahooed all the way down” a sandy hill on horseback while participating in “suicide races.”

Peter Edwards moved to town as a child when his father, a physician, took a job at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The future Toronto Star beat reporter left after high school. The playwright Kevin Loring, on the other hand, hails from...