Eighty Years Ago
February 16, 1939
• Local MP Tom Reid appeared to have been successful in his fight for floral gardens and a park on the Canadian side of the Peace Arch.
• The. B.C. Electric Railway Co. announced cancellation of its 3:05 a.m. milk train out of Vancouver and 7:40 a.m. westbound out of Chilliwack.
Seventy Years Ago
February 17, 1949
• Skyway Air Service dropped 1,000 pounds of grain over the Mud Bay flats near Ladner, in an attempt to entice thousands of half-starved ducks away from the sugar beet and clover crops seeded by farmers the previous fall.
• High school students were being provided with enough homework to last several weeks, in case roads broke up with the thaw. Classes would continue on a correspondence basis.
Sixty Years Ago
February 12, 1959
• The first development in the 5,000-acre Grosvenor-Laing estate in North Aldergrove was 18 months to three years away, Aldergrove Chamber of Commerce was told by the firm’s public relations officer. [Editor: In fact, no real development took place until the Gloucester Estates project took off in the 1980s].
• There was a cool reaction from council to Joe Chesney’s request for moral support for his plan to establish a small radio station in the lower Fraser Valley.
Fifty Years Ago
February 13, 1969
• Half-day post office closures in Langley City, Aldergrove, and Fort Langley were shifted from Monday to Saturday afternoons.
• School board chairman Jack Marriott claimed vandalism in local schools was “the worst it has ever been,” and suggested students do some of their own policing if the principal and other authorities couldn’t.
• Grosvenor-Laing, owners of 3,500 acres northeast of Highway 401 and 264th Street, protested the proposed extension of BC Hydro rail tracks through the middle of its property, and offered to pay to re-route the line west of Livingstone Road (232nd Street).
Forty Years Ago
February 14, 1979
• Winds gusting up to 94 km/h felled trees, lifted roofs off farm buildings, and downed power lines. The storm plunged 20,000 residents into darkness.
• Precipitation for the period from October through January was the lowest ever. The 450 mm of rainfall recorded was 52 per cent of normal.
• A shoe box, purported by its carrier to contain a live rat and two dead ones, was brought into Township council chambers as an example of problems supposedly caused by an Otter Road (248th Street) feedlot. The box was not opened, and all council members declined an offer to look inside.
Thirty Years Ago
February 15, 1989
• Langley MLA Carol Gran said their was no support for Bob Leflufy’s proposal for a race track near the Langley border at 8th Avenue in Matsqui.
• In an attempt to demonstrate their impatience with the pace of contract negotiations, Langley teachers started an instruction-only campaign, arriving at school no more than half an hour before classes were to start, and staying for not more than half an hour after classes ended.
Twenty Years Ago
February 16, 1999
• Former Liberal leader and current NDP cabinet minister Gordon Wilson told Langley Chamber of Commerce that he wanted to bring B.C. politics back to the centre.
• Nine months before the civic election, the Township mayoralty race appeared ready to get underway. Todd McLeod announced his candidacy, and Township Councillor Steve Ferguson said he was about to declare as well.