It was, I suspect, a very Lytton type of rally in the community on Oct. 18.
There were friendly dogs greeting each other. A person carrying a tray of home-baked goods walked alongside the marchers, offering treats (“Lemon slice? Banana bread? Butter tart?”). At the parish hall afterwards, people chatted with each other as they tucked into soup, hamburgers, sandwiches, and nachos, while mayor Denise O’Connor looked on in something like wonder.
“We didn’t plan on having food,” she said. “It just appeared.”
Superficially it was like many other small-town events, where people come together and bring food. The rally on Oct. 18, however, had a deadly serious purpose: to focus attention on the plight of Lytton and its residents, who are now nearly 850 days out from the fire that destroyed 90 per cent of the town, have not seen so much as a garden shed erected, and face even more roadblocks in the form of onerous (and expensive) archaeological demands that have suddenly reared their heads, to the dismay and anger of those wanting to rebuild.
Until now, many residents have bit their tongue over the archaeological hoops they have been forced to jump through, merely saying that while the process was a difficult and lengthy one they understood why it was necessary. Backfilling of properties began in June, two years after the fire, and people hoped that rebuilding would follow in short order. However, more archaeological hurdles appeared, and at a meeting in September a resident announced she had been told that monitoring of work to dig a six-foot trench on her property for utilities was necessary.
AEW LP, the firm that in March 2022 was awarded the contract to carry out the archaeological work, told the resident that the cost of hiring two people to act as monitors would be $1,686 per day for the duration of the work, expected to last 10 days. This cost, she found out, would be at her expense.
The news set off a firestorm of concern, incredulity, and anger among residents, who now fear that they are going to face yet more roadblocks — and substantial costs — before they can put a shovel in the ground. Some of the signs carried by the people in the rally pointed an accusing finger at AEW, whose initial six-month contract has continued to be renewed at a cost that has not been disclosed (the initial six-month contract was for $486,000).
Others have pointed to the provincial government, and residents are now asking why Victoria seems indifferent to their plight, or if there’s even any awareness there of the very real cost being paid by people who just want to go back to their town and get on with rebuilding their homes and their lives.
There is also the very real fear that Lytton will be forgotten, as other fire-ravaged communities in the North Shuswap and the Okanagan face rebuilding. You don’t have to dig very deep to uncover a strong vein of cynicism and bitterness, as Lytton residents look to those other areas — particularly West Kelowna — and wonder aloud if property owners in a wealthy, highly visible area in prime tourist country will face the same roadblocks and delays in rebuilding that have been apparent in Lytton. The province put a fence along Highway 1 at Lytton, so people couldn’t see the village from the highway, and it’s still there more than two years later. Will they build a fence along Okanagan Lake, and allow it to remain there for 27 months (and counting)?
A rainbow hung over Lytton on Oct. 18, and over the more than 100 people who took to the streets with a simple demand: let us come home. Was it a symbol of promise, a sign of better things to come? The residents of Lytton must hope so, as another building (or, more accurately, not building) season comes to an end, and they wonder when — or even if — they will be able to return to the place they love.
