Eighty Years Ago
September 16, 1937
Amateur burglars were blamed for an attack on the safe at municipal hall. Little cash had been in the safe, but three guns were stolen from the police chief’s office.
Seventy Years Ago
September 18, 1947
F.M. Clements, dean of the faculty of agriculture at U.B.C., officially opened Langley’s 55th fall fair. Miss Jean Ritchie was crowned Harvest Queen by outgoing queen Jean Berry.
Thieves who had taken cash and narcotics from Langley Pharmacy were apprehended in Vancouver.
Breakdown of some school buses was blamed on poor road conditions. The school transportation superintendent especially cited River Road in Glen Valley, and Carvolth Road (200th Street) from Jericho Road (72nd Avenue) to the pavement.
Sixty Years Ago
September 12, 1957
Wet weather hampered fall fair attendance on Friday, but Saturday’s warmth brought out a record crowd. Deanne Haid was Harvest Queen.
John McTaggart was named president of the Langley Teachers’ Association, and Al Angrignon was vice-president.
A bylaw to raise $1,241,000 – the local share of the $2,558,334 cost of a new hospital – was drafted for a December referendum. The rest of the cash was to come from senior governments.
Fifty Years Ago
September 14, 1967
Oddy Christianson, retiring president of the Langley Kinsmen Club, chaired a meeting to install the executives of three local clubs: the Kinsmen, the Kinettes, and the K-40 Club.
The Aldergrove Chamber of Commerce went on record in favour of municipal council legislation against unnecessary traffic noise. The main target was drivers who screech their tires.
Forty Years Ago
September 14, 1977
Less than half of the 1,000 additional students expected had made it to the classrooms, swelling total enrolment to 11,9266.
Langley city’s public works crew was expected to begin construction of an extension to Langley Bypass early in the new year.
Twenty Years Ago
September 12, 1997
Ministry of agriculture officials met quietly with local stakeholders in the ongoing dispute over odours emanating from a local mushroom composting plant. The consensus was that the $10 million odour-fighting technology that Money’s Mushrooms planned to install at the plant was a good thing.
After a full meeting of haggling, Township council’s Langley Leadership Team members and independent councillors had agreed to approve a single community grant application and deny three others. Thirty-four applications remained on the table after the rancorous debate which threatened to divide the council irrevocably.
A 17-year-old driver crashed into a group of partying teens at Stokes Pit, killing Ashley Reber and injuring 15 others. [One of the injured teens, daughter of a Langley school trustee, died in hospital weeks later.]
Trinity Western University won a B.C. Supreme Court decision against the B.C. College of Teachers. The College had withheld accreditation from the private university’s Teacher Education program because students were forced to sign a community standards document which made them promise to abstain from premarital sex, adultery, and homosexual activity.