Hello!
“Hello”, I addressed a woman sitting on the next lounge chair. It was January 2019 and we were in San Pancho, a small ocean side town in Mexico about twenty minutes north of Sayulita on the Pacific coast. I had not yet met the woman, it was just a polite non-intrusive salutation that would, I knew, unlock the answer to the unstated question, “Would you like to talk?”.
Introducing Rowe Patricia Penton
“Rowe Patricia Penton” she said in her gentle Sophie voice. We’re calling her ‘Rowe Patricia Penton’. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. ‘Rowe’ was my mother’s maiden name and ‘Patricia’ is Mac’s given name, ‘Patricia Ann”. What an honour. My mum died some time ago but I could feel her smile shining down on little Rowe, so honoured she would have been in that moment.
‘Alpha’: A Love Story. Ainsley’s Version
Ainsley never knew the story her grandfather told her. Her great-great grandfather Sir Archibald Kirby-Macdonell had perished in 1900, drowning in the waters off Chrome Island near Deep Bay BC. He was trying to join the greatest love of his life.
‘Alpha: A Love Story. Fumiko’s version.
Fumiko Watanabe never new the story Mr. Tanake told her. Her grandmother Asami Abako had died in Deep Bay, BC. Some said it was of a broken heart after her true love perished in a terrible storm off Chrome Island in 1900.
Radio Days
Radio careers rested on ratings. And listeners could add in ‘comments’ when they sent their survey back. I’ll never forget the first one I read: ‘PEYTON IS THE WORST THING EVER IN KELOWNA RADIO. HE MUST GO!’
Bubna
The Countess Bubna – Litic was without any doubt one of the most compelling characters Kelowna BC has ever known. She was born Irene May Blair but by the time she landed in Kelowna BC she was a countess, having married an Austrian blue blood. Her legacy began with the opening of a destination resort hotel in 1926. This is an excerpt from her story.
Dirtbags!
“How can you defend those dirtbags!?”
It was my friend Clayton, a retired prison guard who had worked at the Kamloops Regional Corrections Centre. We were sitting together at the ’10am Small Dog Dog Park’ in West Kelowna and Clayton knew I had been a guard at Oakalla prison in Burnaby and a defence lawyer. For him it was more a statement than a question and it was perhaps the two hundredth time I’d been challenged about my work as a criminal defence lawyer.
Tony the Cop
The doors of the Club Zanzibar, one of Vancouver’s most notorious nightclubs, swung open. And in we went an Inspector, a dog handler and his police dog Argus, two other police officers and me, Cst. Tony Peyton, a green untested young cop seconded to the Vancouver Police Department through the UBC law student police officer program.
Tony the Screw
I’m 71 now and have just published a book, “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can’. It begins on August 4, 1958 the day I disembarked with my family at the port of Montreal, fresh immigrants to our new country. I was eight. I wanted to tell my story for my children and theirs, and have spent many months exploring my memories of the decades since. As I spelunked down some deep corridors I came across this story about my time as a guard in one of BC’s most infamous prisons. It was a notorious hell-hole called Oakalla.
Dead Man Walking Part 2
The courtroom doors opened and a man strode in shackled and dressed in prison fatigues, surrounded on all sides by a phalanx of RCMP officers dressed in civilian clothes. Underscoring the tension, each of the police officers had one hand on the prisoner, the other on their weapons, safety off. A man sitting at the back of the court in the gallery was the hitman.