Transcript of audio excerpt (edited by Interviewer): E- "So, where was this one taken?" A- "Cannington Manor is the name of it. It was a small town, and now it’s a historic re-creation of some of the buildings. They have been re-created and built and things. They’re still in existence that part. And that’s where that backrest banner hangs in this place. And that way it thrived between 1882 and 1900. When 1900, the railroad missed them by ten miles, and that was sort of the end of the town. And the man that started [the town] died prior to that. You should read the history of that, it’s a very colourful place. There were three brothers who were raised as gentlemen over there. They did nothing but ride horses and all that stuff. And then they went broke, and they had a grandfather who was always giving them money, and they were broke again, and so he gave them deeds, …a tin mine in Africa. Or India. And it was sort of a defunct tin mine. From what I can gather, but anyway all of sudden the price of tin went BOOM! They were multimillionaires. And they spent it all. They died broke." E- "And so did they stay in Canada?" A- "They stayed quite a number of years. They had butlers and valets, they had a daily…at least weekly paper that came, and one of the duties was to smooth out the paper, and all kinds of things like that. It’s just unbelievable what they did. …It was a very colourful piece of history. Quite a few of them settled across Canada, these remittance men as they were called. They were sent money from home. Some were sent here to get them out of their parents’ hair type of thing. There’s one man by the name of Lord Ogle, he came out to Wood Mountain area, and married an Indian lady, and they sent… remittance was the money that came monthly or yearly. That’s how they got the name. They were shipped. And people or whoever in England decided they would cut off his remittance; he had been out here long enough. He should be able to do alright. So he wrote back, he was sorry they were cutting him off, but he was going to bring his wife and family and come back home. So when they started that, they didn’t want to his wife and children back home, they said they’d send him money again." E- "So what was this family’s name again? The one’s that were multimillionaires?" A- "They were the Beckton brothers they were called. They had race horses that they raced all through the United States and Canada. And they were very good [to] the people around them. A lot of people were poor. They spread their wealth lavishly. The story goes there was one guy in town, and he was broke, and he had a terrible old team and wagon and things, and on Main Street there was a runaway, and so they bought him a new team and wagon. And they staged the runaway, so they could have an excuse to buy this guy a new… They were three brothers that had the money." E- "And you spell that Beckton?" A- "Yep. Now I told you this LeMesuriers story. One of Arthur’s wife’s sisters married one of these Becktons, and there are books and books written about them. They… a lot of them gravitated toward British Columbia where the weather was more British like. And along came the First World War, and almost 90% of them joined up, and went back to England and fought for glory and crown, and sort of got dignity, and a whole pile of them got killed off, course. That sort of ended the whole era of it. And a movie company about twenty years ago, out of Vancouver, they made a documentary about these people. They came through here, and I worked with them to some extent. They used some of my pictures and things." E- "And so when was this, when did they come in?" A- "Oh, it must’ve been ten, twelve years ago, but I don’t remember exactly. But they never get rich off of their documentary. They did sell it to some outfit in B.C. It does air once in awhile; I have seen it on TV."
