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MediaPress Release - July 21 2008Lytton River Festival Celebrates 200 Years
The Lytton River Festival is a celebration of these two great rivers and their past and present role in the interesting little community of Lytton. From Friday evening until late Sunday on Labour Day (August 29-31), the community is awash with celebration. On a historical theme but full of good fun and laughter, The Great Bulwer Lytton Debate occurs on Saturday afternoon. This witty debate is between the Honourable Henry, Bobbold Lytton, the great-great-great grandson of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, (after whom the community was named in 1858), and Scott Rice, the founder of the International Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. “It was a dark and stormy night…” is a world-famous phrase written by novelist and Colonial Secretary Bulwer Lytton, and is commonly thought of the worst opening line in English literature. Mr. Henry Bobbold Lytton, who lives in the UK, will defend his famous ancestor, and Mr. Rice will show why the opening line is a literary tragedy. Colourful Global Television celebrity Mike McCardell will moderate the debate. The Theatre Royal from Barkerville is new to the Festival and will be entertaining all weekend. The Motherlode Tour tells a musical story of the discovery of gold and the clash between the First Nations Community and the gold miners. The musical play explores and highlights the multi-cultural make-up of the thousands of fascinating pioneers who participated in the creation of the Cariboo road and the birth of British Columbia. The “Royal Engineers” is a group of men and women associated with the BC History Society. They set up a bivouac camp at the Festival site on Friday and Saturday nights, and enact the lifestyle of the original Royal Engineers. Dressed in the regalia of the 1860’s, the group enacts several events that made the original group famous during the boisterous days of the gold rush. Members of the group play roles of actual people associated with the 1859 Royal Engineers. They research extensively the characters, lifestyle, and daily activities of individual members to make their role-playing appropriate for the period. For more information on these and other events: www.riverfestival.ca Bernie Fandrich, Lytton River Festival, Event Coordinator Chris O’Connor, Mayor of Lytton Photographs can be downloaded from the media page.
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Copyright © Lytton River Festival
It’s been 200 years since Simon Fraser first descended the Fraser River, stopping at “The Forks”, shaking hands with 1200 curious people, spending the night on the rocks near the junction of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, and then pushing on through country where “no man should venture”.