A hockey stick curved the wrong way might not have been the best Christmas gift, but my memories are priceless

There were few chances to earn money to buy Christmas presents as a kid growing up in the hamlet of Lytton, 260 kilometres northeast of Vancouver in the shadow of Jackass Mountain.

I was lucky enough to live there for the first 12 years of my life, when my dad was kept busy as the sole doctor for the surrounding area.

I did have a regular income stream from my route delivering copies of the Vancouver Sun, but no one got rich delivering papers in Lytton. I barely made enough to keep my bike in good shape and my stomach full of day-old doughnuts from the bakery.

There was also the gaming route to greater wealth. In this pre-lottery, pre-casino age, that meant working several cards at the Lion’s Club Bingo.

There, I could be a high roller amidst the smell of cigarette smoke and coffee, and perhaps take home metal ash trays, cigarette lighters and tiny metal horse statues for Christmas gifts. As my older brothers and little sister weren’t smokers, this still wasn’t enough for all my Christmas shopping needs.

There was also an ill-fated attempt to make money by working the local tourist trade.

I had the idea of capitalizing on the area’s rich history, as it was the centre of the universe for the Nlaka’pamux people for at least 7,000 years.

My scheme was to sell arrowhead souvenirs to American tourists who came by to fish for salmon and trout, and gawk at the scenery.

That made me a Pretendian, a white kid who aped Indigenous culture and tagged along behind local Indigenous schoolyard heroes like Robert Bolan, who was a few years older and seemed amused by my efforts. With no arrowheads of my own to sell, I took a try at making them for the tourist trade. This proved to be much harder than I anticipated, so I quietly gave up on that venture without selling anything. No one paid much attention to me so I wasn’t particularly embarrassed.

My parents also struggled at finding gifts that were just right as there weren’t a lot of shopping options in town. My parents once gave the three boys in our family a wildly curved hockey stick for Christmas. I imagine they found it in the Eaton’s or Simpson’s catalogue. It was like a communal stick, which presented more problems as we weren’t the sharing kind.

My parents had no clue about hockey and weren’t eager to learn. While it was an impressive piece of equipment, the stick’s blade was curved in the wrong direction as we were all right-handed and it was made for a player who shot left.

That said, we didn’t want to send it back. Curved sticks were a rare thing back in the 1960s. It was a source of local envy and winter would be over by the time it was replaced with a stick with the proper curve. Instead, we just used it to launch formidable backhands in games at the rink at Hobo Hollow, at the far end of town.

Christmas gifts that didn’t come out of the catalogue most likely came from Chongs’ department store on Main Street. Lytton once had a thriving Chinatown, back in the 19th century in the days of the gold rush and railroad construction. By the time we got to Lytton, the Chongs were the only Chinese-heritage family in town, running a kid-friendly store where we could read comics to our hearts’ delight without feeling the pressure to buy anything.

Once my dad got Mom a fishing rod and reel just like his from Chongs’ as a big Christmas present. He was sure it was a transformative gift that would elevate their already great relationship to an even higher level. My poor mother was generally a trooper but struggled to tamp down a you-don’t-know-me-at-all expression.

Our Christmases were rich in experiences, if not gifts. A highlight one Christmas season was a visit by a touring American basketball team. They were something like the Harlem Globetrotters. They put on a good show beating a squad of local all-stars while doing tricks that included throwing a ball attached to a rope, throwing a bucket of confetti into the crowd and shining the head of a bald referee.

There’s nowhere at all to shop in Lytton now, as the little-noticed community burned to the ground in the summer of 2021. That made climate change very personal to me. A second fire tore through the area a year later, underlining the danger.

While Lytton is reduced to ashes and memories for the time being, my memories remain strong, especially at this time of year.

I hope that you can pitch in to the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund so that all kids can have happy Christmas memories, too.

Peter Edwards is a Toronto-based reporter primarily covering crime for the Star. Reach him via email: pedwards@thestar.ca

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