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Looking Back: Langley girl gets new heart, lungs

The history of our community through the files of the Langley Advance.
14931390_web1_170525-LAD-M-lookback

Eighty Years Ago

December 29, 1938

• Langley School board decided against appointing an arbitrator to deal with its wage dispute with teachers. Chairman Berry read a Richmond School Board report in which Arthur Laing was quoted as saying there should be no tax increases to pay for teacher salary hikes. If the teachers insisted on raises, Laing had said, then staffing numbers should be decreased accordingly.

Seventy Years Ago

December 30, 1948

• The Langley Towns Planning Commission was dissolved, and the outgoing council recommended that the 1949 council appoint a new commission, with representatives from Aldergrove and Fort Langley.

• The diking commission formed nine years earlier included six Langley Prairie businessmen, together with the reeve (mayor), the school board chairman, and the superintendent of works as ex-officio.

MLA Alex Hope helped open the Pin Bowl, Langley’s new bowling alley.

Sixty Years Ago

December 25, 1958

• Langley council tried to avoid responsibility for supplying water to the South Ridge and Howard McLeod subdivisions. The Public Utilities Commission took issue with council’s pledge not to enter into competition with the two private systems that had been serving the areas for 15 years.

Fifty Years Ago

December 26, 1968

• Final commercial zoning was received for the area of Langley City between Fraser Highway, Old McLellan Road (56th Avenue), and the Surrey border.

• Hogs owned by A. Merle Armstrong of Milner won high honours at the Toronto Winter Fair.

Forty Years Ago

December 27, 1978

The school board announced that a tax mill rate increase was unlikely.

• Langley City considered setting up its own parks and recreation foundation.

Christmas 1978 had been a relatively sober one, according to RCMP, who reported that only 10 impaired drivers had been booked during the week before Christmas.

Thirty Years Ago

December 28, 1988

• A Langley girl who received a new heart and two lungs in a six-hour operation in London, England, earlier in the month was recovering from a hemorrhaging aorta and infection.

• Langley’s first significant snowfall of the winter caused chaos on the streets, including a five-care pile-up on 200th Street. There were no injuries reported.

Twenty Years Ago

December 29, 1998

• Phil Reeves was named the Langley Advance’s 1998 Newsmaker of the Year. Reeves, who started the year as the Township’s director of finance, alerted RCMP to what he considered suspicious invoices, which resulted in a fraud investigation that rocked the Township’s administrative and political establishments. And by the end of the year, he had left his Township post to join Langley School District as its secretary-treasurer.