Seventy Years Ago
January 6, 1944
Growing restrictions in newsprint rationing meant the Langley Advance could no longer be sent free to armed forces personnel stationed within Canada, but it was still provided free overseas.
Sixty Years Ago
January 7, 1954
Langley municipality’s 81st council was sworn in by municipal clerk Derek J. Doubleday. George Brooks started his third three-year term as reeve (mayor).
Due to public outcry, the BC Motor Transport Co. withdrew its application to cancel bus service between Langley Prairie and Aldergove via Milner and Coghlan three nights a week.
A.J. Dodd was re-elected chairman of Langley School Board for his sixth term.
Fifty Years Ago
January 9, 1964
C.J. Fredrickson, retired Burnaby superintendent of schools, was appointed director of Langley’s adult education program.
Municipal clerk D.J. Doubleday reported Township council had adopted 25 bylaws in 1963. There had been 24 council meetings and three public meetings, and 43 special committees had been formed.
Forty Years Ago
January 3, 1974
More than 1,000 people per day had used Aldergrove’s ice arena since its opening the previous week.
Glen Valley parents lobbied for a redistribution of school district boundaries, to allow their children to attend classes in Abbotsford.
Thirty Years Ago
January 4, 1984
Controversy over the lack of safety on the banks of the Nicomekl River was refueled with the drowning of a three-year-old child. Another three-year-old had drowned in the river five years earlier.
A family of five was left homeless when their two-storey Langley City home was destroyed by fire on New Year’s Eve.
Twenty Years Ago
January 5, 1994
Surrey RCMP Drug Squad arrested two Langley residents and seized $70,000 worth of marijuana in a raid on a Willoughby home.
Rylie Taylor House was Langley’s first baby of the New Year.
Seven local men faced charges of unlawful confinement after a teenaged hooker had been held captive during a party in Aldergrove.
Tenders were called for construction of a new elementary school in Murrayville, on property that had once belonged to Langley’s first black pioneer, Jim Hill.
Ten Years Ago
January 6, 2004
The Fraser River was clogging with ice, threatening to stop the Albion Ferry service between Fort Langley and Maple Ridge. Meanwhile, motorists in Langley and throughout the Lower Mainland, were already dealing with heavy snowfalls over the past week when they were told to brace for a predicted 15 centimetres more.
January 9, 2004
Bitter cold and snow forced Langley’s homeless indoors – for the first time, as Langley’s new Extreme Weather Response Plan kicked into action.