Memories last longer when they are shared.  The simple act of telling brings them back to life, makes them more vivid and conveys them, like a gift, to others.  Sometimes the stories fade away, but the really good ones become part of a family’s mythology, and a very few can contribute to the mythology of society at large.  Such is the case with the legend of the gentleman bandit, Billy Miner.

For many years, Peter Grauer has been collecting those stories, seeking out anyone with first-and second-hand memories of the days when Billy Miner and his cohorts roamed central and southern B.C.  He spent six years gleaning further information from museum archives all over the southern half of the province.

Then, chock full of all those memories, stories and facts, he sat down to produce a dense, detailed treatise on the legendary train robber’s years in B.C.

"I had the luxury of being able to sit in my office from November to mid-March and do nothing but write ten to 12 hours a day," says Grauer.  The resulting book, Interred with Their Bones, Billy Miner in Canada 1903-1907 (Partners in Publishing,2006, 600 pages), comes out at the end of May, one hundred years after Miner and his friends robbed the Imperial Limited train at Ducks Station, which is now known as Monte Creek, and faced trial in Kamloops.

The book, while centered on Miner, provides a snapshot of life in the Interior at that time, including a detailed chapter on Kamloops and its amenities.  Numerous characters, long forgotten, come to life again as their roles in the story, however small, are revived.

The factual accounts in Grauer’s book are enlivened by colourful descriptions derived mainly from the memoirs of people who encountered Miner, who went by the name of George Edwards.

"If it wasn’t for people who are now long gone put- ting down their reminiscences of long ago, I would have had a much harder time writing this book," he says.  Historian and author Peter Grauer displays the book he wrote, documenting the stories surrounding the bandit Billy Miner.

“There’s nobody left who were involved in the story. The last person that I talked to was a man born in Barnhartvale in 1900.  He met Billy Miner and his buddies when he was in grade one at Campbell Creek School in Barnhartvale.  He told me, from first hand knowledge, stories of that time.”

Grauer credits that man, Toddy Pratt, who died in 1993, for whetting his appetite for tales of Billy Miner.

“I read government documents, newspaper accounts and telegrams, but the best things of all were the personal anecdotes of people who had left them behind,” he says.  In most cases, people didn't expect their memories to be of interest to anyone but their family, but in the historic context, they are invaluable to researchers.

Grauer stresses that people should write down their memories and submit them to the local archives.

“They don’t have to be Ernest Hemingway, they just have to write it down.  We all have our responsibility as keepers of memories, because that is our window to the life of the past and how the past affects us today.  Most people don’t take the time to think why certain things are done a certain way and many times it ’s because of incidents that happened a hundred years ago.”

Bill Miner’s status as a legend is partly due to his impact on people and the stories he engendered, Grauer says.

As George Edwards, he cut a flamboyant figure.  He spent freely, flashed around $100 and $1,000 bills and boasted that his pistols would protect him from theft.

“You don’t ride around Kamloops on a beautiful thoroughbred racehorse sitting in a beautiful red leather saddle without wanting to attract attention.”

He was particularly fond of women and children, and took the time to get to know them.  He told them stories, wrote them letters and was very generous with his money.

“He could afford to.  He stole all his money,” Grauer says with a smile.

“He lived on in the minds of the women and children.   They passed on stories of a man they remembered as mannered and gentle and who treated them with respect.”

In fact, Grauer says, Miner’s charming ways belied a devious disregard for social conventions.  People were shocked when they learned that he was a liar and a thief.

“When you read the book you’ll see more of the classic symptoms of a sociopath.”

Grauer says that he originally set out to dispel the myth of Billy Miner.

“The accepted story is going to be set on its ear a bit, but the myth is still going to be there.”  One historic detail that Grauer contests in the book is the identity of the third man in Miner ’s band on the night of the robbery at Ducks.  The newspapers of the day, unrestrained by current journalistic principles, condemned the wrong man and influenced the trial, he says.

“A miscarriage of justice happened, which is detailed in the book.  An innocent man was jailed, and he died in jail.”  When further queried, he archly says we’ll just have to read the book for more information.

One of the benefits of writing the book like this is the people you encounter.  Grauer was especially fortunate to meet the daughters of Constable William Fernie, the provincial policeman who captured Miner and his friends and brought them to justice.

The Fernie sisters, Daphne and Mary, had never married and were in their 90’s when Grauer and his wife Karen visited them in Victoria.  Daphne met them dressed in a smart sweater and her best pearls.

“She was so excited about us being there, writing about her father.  There was never anything written about him.  What a treat it was that Peter’s book took us there,” Karen says.   In numerous letters written before she died, Daphne Fernie passed her stories to Peter Grauer.  Their father spoke little of the Billy Miner affair, so she could not relate his side of that story, but she was able to tell of his career and his close relationship with First Nations people.

“My correspondence with the Fernie sisters gave me the flavour of what it was like to live in the Kamloops area at that time,” he says. 

On her last visit to Kamloops, Daphne donated her father ’s fishing gear and some treasured family photographs to our local museum.

The Grauers spent a good deal of time traveling around the Kamloops region, seeking out sites of specific importance to the story.

“How can you write with any ambience without visiting these places?  We traveled on roads that people don ’t know exist that were main roads 100 years ago.  When you drive on those roads you can feel the weight of history on your shoulders,” he says.  Since writing the book, he sees this area in a different light, always in association with events of the past, which he believes people who read the book will also experience.

“What it does is, it gives you an attachment to the land, and attachment to the past and an attachment to the present.  The land stays the same - the people change.”

Tales like that of Billy Miner are important in that they generate interest in history, which was one of his goals with this book, he says.

“I wanted to achieve a pride and awareness in people in this area for their own roots, their ancestors.  When people have that pride they are better stewards of the land and the stories.”

Grauer would have to be considered a self-taught historian - or perhaps a natural.  His mother’s family, the Portmans, homesteaded in the Kamloops area in 1885.  He grew up in Revelstoke in a family of avid readers and lovers of history.

He took three years of an arts program at UBC but, homesick for Revelstoke and disenchanted with academic life, did not graduate.  Clearly, he did learn what was required to produce a well-documented, credible and engagingly written historic account.

A recognized expert on Billy Miner’s Canadian exploits, Grauer has appeared in History Channel documentaries on the subject.

Formerly a manager with the City of Kamloops, he is currently semi-retired and serving as project manager for the Aberdeen Highlands housing subdivision.  Now that this book is finished, he says he may look into one of the many fascinating people he encountered while doing his research “who deserve a book on their own.”

“There are lots of stories, lots of characters that I would love to be able to research.”

Grauer’s publicity touts his book as “the final word on Bill Miner in Canada 1903- 1907 ”, but he admits that may be premature.  Since he began publicizing this self- published book, he’s had some interesting calls from people with new stories to tell, which, if substantiated, could add new depth to the story.  New developments, as well as some interesting side stories, are posted on Grauer’s Web site, www.billminer.ca.

Copies of the book will be available at At Second Glance bookstore, 448 Victoria St. the end of May.  Grauer will have a book signing at the bookstore, on Sat., June 10 from 1-3 p.m.