Description
Before it made global headlines as the small town that burned down during a record-breaking heat wave in June 2021, while briefly the hottest place on 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, organised-crime journalist and author of over a dozen 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, a member of the Nlaka''pamux Nation at 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. In modern times, many outsiders would seek shelter there, often people who just didn''t fit anywhere else and were ho