JON WHYTE: Keeper of Place
Remembered Banff
My Banff is private, secret, silent as
memory. You can’t visit it, even briefly, except through me. It’s
a world of caves and tunnels we dug in the soft river sand of our
backyard, under the brambles of wild roses; it’s the universe of knights
and chivalry we used to fantasize when
we played in the station bush, and
the secret cove and beach of First Lake where we used to skinny-dip; it’s
where we built the tree-house . . . it’s Jimmy Simpson’s stamp collection
and Mrs. Simpson’s string ball, shortcuts through Lefroy’s, music floating
like smoke over the crystalline stillness of winter from Uncle Allan’s
skating rink, the tree we found the porcupine in . . . and the sweat and
urine, hay and oats-rich odors of Ike’s stables where lantern-jawed Bill
Dennison sat slouched beneath the sinister brim of his black Stetson.
You can never hope to visit that Banff, because it can never exist again, though it continues to exist for me more richly and permanently than all the other Banffs . . . nor would I choose another place to live.
– Jon Whyte
"The Secret Banff: The Town Behind the
Tourists"
Calgary, August,
1979
As fresh manure draws flies, Ike’s place drew kids . . .
Hot still air of late afternoon;
In shrieks and giggling,
the afternoon’s recessional,
Lantern-Jaw tail-ties sixteen horses in a
line,
Saddles four, and four kids ride bareback.
– Jon Whyte
“He was absolutely the best human resource around for the history of the Bow Valley and places like Lake O’Hara and Skoki. They were special places in his life and he wanted them to be special for other romantics as well.
He particularly wanted us to know what it was like to grow up in the
Banff of the 1940s and ‘50s, a kinder and gentler place then. And in the
end he made us believe that Billie Mackenzie and Donny Becker were our
childhood pals. That we really remembered where the old Dominion Café used
to stand. That we’d watched Ping, the Chinese tailor, make our first suit
in his dim little shop. And that the best of all possible things on a hot
summer day was to run down along the bank of the Bow, the best of all
possible rivers, for a ginger ale at Pete and Catharine’s.”
– Brian Patton
Crag &
Canyon, January 15, 1992
Peter married
Catharine Robb, and they 
became
Pete ‘n’
Catharine, living a hundred yards north of us in a log house, another
source of cookies, meringues, ginger ale and grapefruit juice,
conversation and the best library in town.
– Jon Whyte
From The Fells of Brightness: Some Fittes and
Starts
Audio
Clips: Childhood Reminiscences
(The clips below are WAV
files.)
Clip One
Clip Two
Clip Three
(A transcription of the above
quotes.)