Eighty Years Ago
August 16, 1934
Parents wanted to know if there would soon be a sidewalk upon which their little tots could walk to school in Langley Prairie.
Business establishments all over B.C. were faced with the difficulties of conforming to a minimum wage and an enforced reduction of the work week to 48 hours.
Seventy Years Ago
August 17, 1944
A public meeting in the Elks Hall attracted about 150 ratepayers, who voted unanimously to look into the possibility of incorporating Langley Prairie as a stand-alone municipality, separate from the rest of Langley.
Councillor Bray put out the call for a $65,000 referendum to help build a hospital in Langley.
Sixty Years Ago
August 19, 1954
A tentative date of Sept. 27 was set for a vote to determine whether or not Langley Prairie was to be incorporated as an independent village separate from the rest of Langley. The polling date came out of an agreement between the Incorporation Committee and Township Reeve George Brooks. Regardless of the outcome, final approval for secession would still have to come from Municipal Affairs Minister W.D. Black.
The BC Electric Company donated its former local depot and office to the LangÂley Agricultural Association. The property was to become part of the fair grounds in time for the annual Fall Fair.
Fifty Years Ago
August 20, 1964
Tenders were called for clearing a site for a new high school in Fort Langley.
E.L. Potter started construction on a half-million-dollar distillery on a 15-acre site at the corner of Glover and Logan Roads.
Pacific Northwest champion Langley All-Stars were knocked out of the running for the Little League World Series when the local squad was defeated by a team from California.
Forty Years Ago
August 15, 1974
B.C. Premier David Barrett visited Langley, in company with his wife and son. He was the guest of honour at the NDP Club’s annual picnic at Williams Park.
Langley Township aldermen were optimistic about a new municipal water well drilled on the 32nd Avenue road allowance in Fernridge. The well was expected to produce 800 gallons per minute.
Beef prices dropped drastically at local auctions. Good steers sold between $38 and $47 per live cwt., and the rate for veal was between $41 and $55.
Thirty Years Ago
August 15, 1984
After a “discouraging†meeting with the spokesman for the Lower Mainland Refuse Project, TownÂship council unanimousÂly rejected all four dumpsites proposed for location within Langley municiÂpality. The LMRP’s mandate was to find a landfill site to handle all of the Lower Mainland’s solid waste disposal needs.
A Langley man was charged with first degree murder in the death of a Surrey woman. Charges of sexual assault committed against several other Langley and Surrey women were pending.
Twenty Years Ago
August 17, 1994
McGavin’s bakery, which after 20 years in Langley was employing 200 people, was undergoing further expansions at its Langley Bypass location.
Shawood Lumber suffered a fire that destroyed between $100,000 and $200,000 worth of stockpiled cedar.
The Goodyear Blimp was to make a stopover in Langley, using the local airport as its base while it fulfilled a CBC conÂtract to cover the CommonÂwealth Games, the AbbotsÂford Airshow, and other events in the general area.
Township council started on a bylaw to keep the CFS Aldergrove property from being chopped up and sold, setting a minimum subdivÂision lot size of 247 acres.
Two local school fires were blamed on arson. An AbbotsÂford youngster playing with matches was determined to have been the cause of a fire that burned a wooden staircase at North Otter Elementary School, and an unknown arsonist was responsible for scorching walls and melting part of the roof at Brookswood Secondary School. Neither fire was expected to cause a delay in the September start of classes.
Ten Years Ago
August 17, 2004
Fort Langley National Historic Site was behind picket lines, embroiled in a contract dispute between Parks Canada and the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
Hundreds of tips and police teamwork led to the speedy arrest of a 41-year-old Surrey man suspected in the abduction of an 11-year-old girl from a Langley street in broad daylight.
Fifteen-year-old Langley golfer Darren Wallace captured the 100th Canadian Amateur Golf championship in Quebec.
One of two hippopotami housed at the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove died.
August 20, 2004
Federal authorities lifted all remaining restrictions implemented earlier to battle an avian flu that tore through the Fraser Valley and caused financial losses to poultry farmers estimated at $400 million.