Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire
Indigenous peoples biography, Canadian non-fiction, General non-fiction
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
From bestselling true-crime author Peter Edwards and Governor General's Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, two sons of Lytton, BC, the town that burned to the ground in 2021, comes a meditation on hometown―when hometown is gone.&“It&’s dire,&” Greta Thunberg retweeted Mayor… JanPolderman. &“The whole town is on fire. It took a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.&”Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heatwave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest placeon Earth, Lytton, British Columbia, had a curious past. Named for the author of the infamous line, &“It was a dark and stormy night,&” Lytton was also where Peter Edwards, organized-crime journalist and author of seventeen non-fiction books, spent his childhood. Although only about 500 people lived in Lytton, Peter liked to joke that he was only the second-best writer to come from his tiny hometown. His grade-school classmate&’s nephew Kevin Loring, Nlaka&’pamux from Lytton First Nation, had grown up to be a Governor General&’s Award–winning playwright. The Nlaka&’pamux called Lytton &“The Centre of the World,&” a view Buddhists would share in the late twentieth century, as they set up a temple just outside town. A gold rush in 1858 saw conflict with a wave of Californians come to a head with the Canyon War at the junction of the mighty Fraser and Thompson rivers. The Nlaka&’pamux lost over thirty lives in that conflict, as did the American gold seekers. In modern times, many outsiders would seek shelter there, often people who just didn&’t fit anywhere else and were hoping for a little anonymity in the mountains. Told from the shared perspective of an Indigenous playwright and the journalist son of a settler doctor who pushed back against the divisions that existed between populations, Lytton portrays all the warmth, humour and sincerity of small-town life. A colourful little town that burned to the ground could be every town&’s warning if we don&’t take seriously what this unique place has to teach us.