The annual Douglas Day banquet for longtime Langley residents was focused this year on early health care providers.
There was a vintage 1950s ambulance parked out front and displays of hospital photos and mid-century medical equipment inside.
Some of the visitors were also personally involved, like Dr. Fred Ceresney and his wife Ina.
They moved to Langley and Fred opened a practice in 1959.
“I’d just got out of the army,” Fred said.
They had been stationed for a time in Chilliwack, and after looking over the whole Lower Mainland, picked Langley to live in. The couple originally hailed from Toronto.
The biggest change from their first year living in Langley has been the number of people.
“You knew everybody,” Ina said of Langley in the late 1950s.
“It was a small town,” said Fred.
The couple had 10 children, some of them born on a mattress at the old Langley Cottage Hospital. It was so busy sometimes that the staff had to make do, Ina recalled.
The ambulance out front reminded Fred of Al Davis, who drove Langley’s one and only ambulance in the 1950s.
The annual banquet took place on Thursday, Nov. 19, and attracted several hundred attendees, as well as local dignitaries. It is held annually to mark the anniversary of the proclamation of B.C. becoming a British colony, as well as to honour longtime residents.