Condolence: As a volunteer on 4B in Norfolk General, I had the pleasure of getting acquainted with Bill. He was funny and had some interesting stories to tell about his job with the Spectator and all the areas he was responsible for.
My condolences to his family and friends.

Condolence: I worked at the Spec as a young reporter for about two years until 1970 ... a long time ago, in other words. But I still remember fondly the terrific people who taught me so much in those early days of my life as a journo. My condolences to the Lyttle family. I hope you are consoled by the fact that, as we say in Australia, he had a good innings.
Peter Krien

Condolence:
Dear Sheila, Please accept my very deepest sympathy in your loss of Bill. I have fond memories of our times together, many years ago, when Doug and I were in your company with Bill and the Korstanjes at Spectator "dos". Doug has been gone 31 years and I still have the lovely editorial written by Bill when Doug passed away. Take care, Phyllis (Wright) Thomas

Condolence: Our sincere condolence to Sheila and the family for your loss.
Lloyd and Lyn Zimmerman (Alberton)

Condolence: Our deep condolences to Sheila and the rest of the family. Renee and I remember well Bill and Sheila's friendliness and hospitality when we moved to Hamilton and I joined the Spec's editorial page team in1981. For five years I was Bill's cubicle neighbour at the Spec. I learned many things from him, perhaps most importantly how to "wrench" a teapot and how to chew tobacco. Bill and Renee shared an Ulster background. Once, when she and I were in his hometown of Coleraine, we stopped in at Bill's favourite pub, I went up to the bartender and asked him, "Does the name Blll Lyttle mean anything to you?" The bartender nodded tensely. Maybe it was because it was a strange way to say hello in a pub at the height of the Troubles, or maybe Bill had made a lasting impression. He was that type of guy.

John and Renee Levesque

Condolence: My sympathy to Sheila and all the family including the extended members.

Bill and I were young reporters together at the Spectator long decades ago. I asked the one or two retirees I have kept in touch with (why didn't I think of the wonderful Stewart Brown?) where Bill was - Ron Hands, who died just months ago, among them - but nobody had kept in direct touch. All too late we feel the loss of someone from our past with whom we have good, sometimes comic, relationships and memories. Bill had a great, dry, genial wit, and an apparent total lack of bad moods - and at our shared time was an excellent police reporter. For a time I was the "third body" on the police beat, Bill and Eaton Howitt (long gone) being the main ones. This, note, was all pre-moustache.

One never thinks that on leaving a shared milieu that former colleagues will move, drift away, disappear from anyone's contact, and of course die. After some years (1953-1963) at the Spec, where I was the runt of the Lautens newspaper brood, eventually a dozen or so whose most prominent member was my older, smarter, handsomer, much more popular and more talent brother Gary - we both married (unrelated) girls named Lane, and his wife was blonder than mine - I dropped in on the "new" (now quite elderly itself) Spec building on Frid Street a few times and met fewer and fewer former colleagues. Thoughtlessly, I didn't get the demanded names, addresses and ages of those I was close to at work as a good reporter should. Bill should have been prominently among them.

I remember the fondness for an ale or two - I never once saw Bill the worse for drink, as a few newspaper staffers I've encountered are, though I'm not aware of any these sterner, more funless days (turning 80 this month, I am still gainfully employed as a columnist with two Vancouver-area papers, having toiled 35-odd years for The Vancouver Sun, marking 61 years in the business as of Oct. 9). We had a Hamilton Press Club, the first of its era off Mary Street behind the now-gone Century theatre, and we tried to keep it going but I believe didn't have enough dedicated drinkers to keep it solvent, possibly because of the nearby competition of The Honest Lawyer public house, its name eventually changed due to pressure from angry lawyers insulted by the implication that any lawyers would be of dishonest inclination.

I am sad when I visit Hamilton these days; one day a few years ago I walked slowly along King Street looking at the shops and came without expectation on 115, the old Spec building, and was stunned by nostalgia. Bill passed through those doors much longer than I did, but my connections go rather a long way back; my father Joseph, who was The Canadian Press's longest-serving employee (1920-1970), had his teletype room there starting from around 1930, and I was brought in to the newsroom at age six weeks, or three months - the dispute over which caused a serious rift in the family (Bill, you'd smile at that "joke") - and I used to hope that one day I'd be carried out of a newsroom. But now I'm too old for that.

My regards to Sheila and family.

Sincerely,

Trevor Lautens,
West Vancouver, B.C.