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Langley Looking Back: 1934: Relief bumped to $2 per day

Eighty Years Ago

February 1, 1934

Council raised relief pay (welfare) from $1.50 to $2 per day.

Seventy Years Ago

February 3, 1944

Reeve Alex Hope introduced a resolution that Japanese Canadians be re-established along B.C.’s coastal area after the war was over. Canadian citizens having committed no crime other than having been born of Japanese ancestry had been moved to inland internment camps after Japan entered World War Two.

Local constables raided a shack near Aldergrove, and arrested six men and a woman for operating a still. The 85-gallon still had 55 gallons of mash in prepara­tion. In court, two men were released and the rest were fined $125 apiece.

Sixty Years Ago

February 4, 1954

Gas pumps in front of Murrayville Garage blew up and burned. Flames were doused before they got to the underground tanks. Employ­ees and neighbours suffered no worse than a bad scare.

Fifty Years Ago

February 6, 1964

City council raised the local magistrate’s pay from $50 per month to $250.

Langley City considered a public library and a com­munity centre as possible 1967 Centennial projects.

City taxpayers had to cough up $157,312 for school purposes.

Forty Years Ago

January 31, 1974

Dave Christenson was appointed Langley City’s administrator.

Salary for Langley Township’s mayor was raised from $8,500 to $10,000 per year. Aldermen’s pay went up from $2,726 to $4,800.

Construction began on Douglas Hall.

Thirty Years Ago

February 1, 1984

Fire destroyed the library at Anderson Elementary School, but the rest of the building was spared.

Fraser River fishermen felt threatened by fisheries legislation affecting gill-netters and seiners.

Twenty Years Ago

February 2, 1994

The Langley Advance changed the format of its Wednesday edition from broadsheet to the smaller-sized tab, the same size that the free-distribution Friday edition had been for years. It was the first major format change for the newspaper since World War Two.

Jennifer Kronkhite was presented with the Eric Flowerdew Award, as Langley Township’s top volunteer.

Langley City council registered its displeasure with plans for a neighbourhood pub on 56th Ave., just over the border in Surrey.

Ten Years Ago

February 3, 2004

A second-floor fire at Park Terace apartments drove 100 Langley City residents onto the streets.

Fort Langley-Aldergrove MLA and Solicitor General Rich Coleman proposed adding a B.C. touch to federal drunk driving laws. His new rules would lower acceptable blood alcohol levels to 0.05 per cent, although the standard for criminality would remain at the federal 0.08 per cent.

February 6, 2004

Most of the 100 residents barred from their apartments after a second-floor fire earlier in the week were allowed to return after inspections were done, but not yet those whose homes were on the third floor.