In August of 1952, a Brookswood woman claimed to have been awakened by a flying saucer.
She was able to give a detailed description the Unidentified Flying Object (I’ve capitalized UFO to distinguish it from legitimate unidentified flying objects such as potatoes or apples or other vegetables or fruits hurled by delinquent children at passersby who run for cover without taking the time to stop and identify the objects hurled at them). She told a local news reporter that it was “D-shaped and travelling at tremendous speed.”
She said the object was “pale yellow, like the moon, but bright as the sun.”
Concrete evidence of the apparition was never revealed, nor was there any subsequent report of a repeat performance.
In an apparently unrelated story in the same edition of the Langley Advance, it was reported that a mobile driver’s licence inspection station set up in the area determined that many drivers needed glasses.
In retrospect, maybe the stories were not unrelated. Perhaps vision impairment was not an affliction restricted to drivers of motor vehicles.
Actually, looking through old newspapers, it’s almost impossible not to stumble over something interesting, or even awe-inspiring.
Consider these two gems from a single edition in July of 1932.
Interesting: Langley’s high school principal (note the singular) earned $2,000 for the year, while an assistant with three years’ experience received $1,300, and “the other two” teachers each received $1,200.
Awe-inspiring: Farmers gathered at the J.W. Berry farm to witness a stump-burning demonstration put on by B.C. Electric which was showing off a new method of using electricity to dispose of large tree stumps.
And sometimes, you’ll find a little tidbit buried in a back page, a short but deeply revealing note that probably never garnered much attention at the time or since, but one that’s refreshingly uplifting when viewed from a time in which, all around us, we are seeing rising resentment against immigrants and people “not like us”.
It was the last week of August 1932, and municipal councils from across the province were gathered to coordinate their lobbying efforts to senior governments.
The City of Duncan had forwarded a resolution that mothers’ pensions – government funding paid out to moms to help them feed and clothe their children during economically trying times – be denied to “Hindus or Asiatics.” Duncan wanted only mothers of “British origin” to receive the pensions.
Langley council voted unanimously against the resolution.
Oh, and during that very same week, the price of butter “jumped” to 26 cents per pound at Teece’s Cash & Carry Grocery.