Businessman and author Tom Lymbery, whose family has been synonymous with Gray Creek for more than a century, has died at 97.
Lymbery’s death was announced on Facebook by the Gray Creek Store, the business his father Arthur established in 1913 that Tom nurtured and expanded into a destination unto itself.
“Tom lived a full life devoted to serving his community, with a deep love of writing, reading and history,” the post said, adding that he died on Saturday.
Outside of the last few years, when he lived in Nelson, and time spent at a boarding school in Vancouver as a teenager, Lymbery spent his entire life in Gray Creek.
He published a two-volume autobiography, Tom’s Gray Creek: A Kootenay Lake Memoir, which chronicled his life and the life of the East Shore. He also wrote prolifically for the Mainstreet, a monthly newspaper to which he contributed a historical feature each issue as well as Tom Sez, a column of short musings. Lymbery further served on the local Chamber of Commerce and was always deeply involved in the community.
The store that remains in the family after 112 years began through happenstance. Arthur Lymbery came from England intending to grow fruit and bought land at what was then a remote community on Kootenay Lake. Because he lived next to the beach where the sternwheeler dropped off supplies three days per week, the community asked him to open a store. Lymbery agreed.
Gray Creek remained an idyll but somewhat sleepy community until 1931, when it was named the eastern terminus of the Kootenay Lake ferry. Suddenly, traffic was passing through daily, creating new business opportunities.
To the store, Arthur added a post office, gas pump, and auto camp. Tom began working in the store at age 12 and eventually returned home from school to take it over.
“I could have gone to university, if there had been some of today’s benefits and scholarships,” he recalled in a 2012 interview. “You had to have a plus-95 to get any sort of scholarship in those days. So I didn’t think too much of going into that. I liked it here in Gray Creek. There was always lots to do.”
Traffic patterns changed again. In 1947, the ferry terminal moved to Kootenay Bay, and in 1963, the opening of the Kootenay Pass meant it was no longer necessary for motorists travelling through the area to pass through Gray Creek. But Lymbery ensured the store remained viable.
He expanded the store’s offerings from simple groceries to woodstoves and chainsaws. A much larger store opened in 1979. (The old building still stands near the current one.) An upper floor included clothing and hardware, while one corner was always well-stocked with Kootenay and BC-related books, reflecting Lymbery’s reading habits.
Lymbery also had a knack for marketing. The Gray Creek Store claimed, with justification, to be the “Woodstove and Fireplace Capital of the Kootenays” and “The Most Interesting Store You’ve Ever Seen. The store also used the tag “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”
For Lymbery, a well-stocked store was a point of pride. “People go to Vancouver and come back say gee, we had to go to several stores to find what we bought at yours,” he said. The only item the store never stocked was liquor.
Lymbery’s clever slogans extended to the community at large. He came up with the nickname “Best Shore,” and used a chainsaw to create Gray Creek’s welcome signs, which declared Gray Creek a metric-free zone, inspired in part by confusion between imperial and metric measurements that caused grief during construction of the new store.
The signs also declared Gray Creek to be home of the gold boulder, a mythical lost treasure. In the 1960s, Lymbery got to know a couple of men who were determined to find it, to no avail.
Lymbery became interested in local history from listening to his father’s stories, and was a fount of knowledge, able to recall people and events associated with the East Shore with remarkable precision.
Lymbery had been president of the Gray Creek Historical Society since it was founded in 2003 and his family’s artifacts helped fill exhibits for an annual museum days held at the local community hall. He also served as vice-president of the BC Historical Federation.
While Lymbery gradually scaled back his involvement at the store, he never really retired. “I go down there and do a bit everyday,” he said in 2012. “I’m not necessarily on the sales floor anymore, but I check to see what’s happening.”
Lymbery is survived by his wife Sharon, whom he married in 1963, and two children.
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