Soldiers marched long Fraser Highway near Glover Road in Langley Prairie in the 1941 photo. Langley Prairie became Langley City in 1955. Today, it’s the corner of Fraser Highway looking towards Glover Road.
In Langley history:
Eighty Years Ago
October 12, 1939
- Langley won the first game of the Inter-High School football series. New Westminster’s Trapp Techical School fell 3-1.
Seventy Years Ago
October 13, 1949
- Clerk J.G. Campbell told council there would b e a $37,000 surplus by the end of December. Revenue from the Langley Prairie ward (now Langley City) would be $144,000.
Sixty Years Ago
October 8, 1959
- First sod was cut at Otter Road (248th Street) for the new freeway through Langley. Getting the 10-mile stretch from Livingstone Road (232nd Street) ready for paving cost $140,000 per mile.
- Secession talks started again in Fort Langley. The Board of Trade set up a committee to investigate the possibility of the village leaving Langley Township and going on its own.
Fifty Years Ago
October 9, 1969
- Council considered buying an incinerator for Langley Municipal Hall, to eliminate frequent trips to the Aldergrove garbage dump, and to save the cost of an employee to tend to open fires needed at the dump to destroy the papers.
Forty Years Ago
October 10, 1979
- Construction of a provincial courthouse in Langley City’s Square One was hailed as a “welcome addition to the downtown concept” by Mayor Bob Duckworth.
- After winning its battle to have 626 acres of North Aldergrove land released from the Agricultural Land Reserve, Gloucester Properties still had a big job ahead – including getting the land rezoned – to make its proposed Fraser Industrial Park a reality.
Thirty Years Ago
October 11, 1989
- Langley Community Music School asked the Township to donate land at 221st Street in Murrayville for a new music school.
- Twin Rinks Ltd. bought five acres near 200th Street and 92A Avenue in Walnut Grove for a $4-million ice-skating complex.
- A 201-name petition opposed B.C. Tel’s plans to give Aldergrove one-way toll-free service to Vancouver and Burnaby – and increase phone bills in the area from $9.75 per month to $18.35.
Twenty Years Ago
October 12, 1999
- A political storm of dramtic proportions was brewing in Langley Township, and the first thunderclap came in the form of a taped telephone conversation between Township councillor Heather McMullan, who was carrying the Langley Citizens Coalition (LCC) banner into the mayoralty race against incumbent Langley Leadership Team (LLT) Mayor John Scholtens, and LLT councillor Dean Drysdale. The recording, made before Drysdale was himself elected to council in 1996, had McMullan admitting that she had harassed people who did not share her point of view. Confronted with the contents of the tape by the Langley Advance, McMullan claimed that the tape had been “doctored” by the LLT.
- Meanwhile, LLT organizer Gregory Thomas threatened a lawsuit against Heather McMullan over comments she had made and which had been published in the Vancouver Sun. [The Langley Advance cannot republish the essence of McMullan’s comments, due to a subsequent libel action ruling in Thomas’s favour in B.C. Supreme Court.]
October 15, 1999
- After allowing weeks of speculation to brew, Mayor John Scholtens pleased his Langley Leadership Team colleagues by announcing that he would seek re-election as the LLT candidate for mayor.
- LLT organizer Gregory Thomas hired a lawyer and demanded an apology from Township councillor and mayoralty contender Heather McMullan, who in turn went to the police and announced she had “new evidence” backing up her allegations.
- Meanwhile, McMullan’s support within the LCC was waning, as a result of the Dean Drysdale tape and her public claim that it was a fake.
