August 18, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
August 18, 1921
HAS FATAL SEQUEL – Old Man Falls From Haystack on Mainguy Island.
It’s by no means the biggest news story on this front page of the Leader but it’s the most eye-catching. Harry Blake, 74, had died in Chemainus hospital 16 days after falling onto a jagged rock from a haystack. He suffered fractured ribs and a dislocated spine.
A curious touch to this tragedy is that he was rushed to hospital in the ex-Duncan city ambulance which his employer, Capt. J.V. Norman Williams, had bought from the city after it was replaced with a new “motor.”
Valley real estate sales were popping in August 1921. Two large properties, one at Somenos the other at Westholme, had been bought by new arrivals from the Old Country. City sales included several residences and business frontage. Maple Bay properties were highly prized back then too. Several other purchases were made by newcomers to the Valley.
It was speculated that Miss Denny and Miss Geoghan, proprietors of Queen’s Margaret’s School, were planning to move their operation to a property at the corner of Gibbins Road and the (Old) Island Highway.
400,000 feet of lumber and 100,000 feet of ‘Jap squares’ (sic) had been shipped from the Genoa Bay sawmill via CPR and CNR barges, the S.S. Canadian Prospector was also loading for Japan, and two young residents or, more likely, workers, Fred Elliot and Leslie Bickle, were off to Vancouver for their second year of studies at UBC.
Duncan was about to enjoy the benefits of having “new funeral parlours which will equal any similar establishment on the Pacific coast for equipment,” C. Norman Phair having bought the R.H. Whidden undertaking business. Phair had bought the annex from the old Alderlea Hotel and moved it to a site on Government Street where it would later be attached to the back of the new Royal Canadian Legion Hall. (It was torn down maybe 10 years ago.)
The two-storey, 1500-square-foot conversion included an office, morgue, embalming and ‘laying out’ facilities, showrooms and a chapel able to accommodate 50 people on the ground floor. “Upstairs there is a rest-room” is the way the Leader somewhat cryptically puts it. (I don’t think they’re referring to a washroom.) A custom-made hearse was being outfitted in Victoria and a new motor-car was also in the works.
Phair, who’d learned his craft in Ontario, moved to Duncan after 10 years of undertaking in Victoria.
A new rule by the provincial government banned keeping live fish in boxes or crates or other receptacles except when they were being transported to market.
Possession of a .22 rifle for target practice cost non-Canadian F.S. Hyatt $10 fine; at that he was let off lightly, said Magistrate Maitland-Dougall who noted that Hyatt pleaded guilty and had bought a fishing license as was required.
Members of the Hundred Thousand Dollar Club (successful insurance agents) had held their western convention at the Riverside Inn in Lake Cowichan. Their itinerary included a tour of some of the logging operations in the area.
Westholme parents were still badgering the Duncan Consolidated School board for their own school to spare their 12 eligible primary school children being bused to and from town. Westholme resident Capt. J. Gaisford suggested that the community hall be used temporarily. The Board did have the hall in mind for a temporary school but wanted older students to continue to commute. The Board also acknowledged that driving children to and fro cost $1500 per year—a good start towards the cost of a small schoolhouse at Westholme.
Once again the issue of local children having to share educational facilities with “an undesirable class of Oriental children” in the Chemainus school reared its ugly head thanks, this time, to a letter from a Mrs. Brodie.
She and other parents wanted segregation. The letter was received and filed.
The directors of the Cowichan Agricultural Society had agreed to proceed with a merger with the Cowichan Utility Poultry Association, mutual affairs to be run by a separate board consisting of directors from both groups. An unusual feature of the impending 1921 Fall Fair was that there were to be no poultry entries; there would be a separate show later on in the year and it would back to business as usual in 1922.
W.M. Fleming and W. Walden were to create a CAS display for the Saanich Fair, T.H. McNichol’s tender for sale of ice cream at the local fair was accepted, and the Children’s Aid Society were granted permission to hold a Tag Day at the Fair.
The Fall Fair is the real news story of the day, a bold headline in the centre of the page proclaiming,
YOU – AND THE FALL FAIR
Splendid Opportunity To Make Your Stock And Products kNown – Useful Hints on Preparation of Farm and Garden Exhibits
This passionate appeal for participation, by-lined by W.M. Fleming, seems odd for an annual event that has become part of the Valley’s DNA, but apparently it was necessary in 1921. It seems that the secretary of the CAS was having to “go down on his knees, with tears in his eyes, to coax exhibitors to promise to show this fall”.
“Niggardly” prizes were said to be a major factor, some people sneeringly saying, “I would not take my stuff off the place for such small prizes.”
“This is a very regrettable action to take,” wrote Fleming. “The main object of the Fair is being missed entirely. How can anyone tell whether he will win anything without comparison with the other exhibits that will be there?
“How can he discover the defects and the good qualities in his own stuff unless he takes them to the fair, where alone comparisons are possible? Everyone ha something to show which will do him credit even if it does not win anything...
“The fair is the cheapest advertising medium the breeder has and the beginner in the business can not begin too soon to advertise.”
He then goes on to instruct potential exhibitors in how to groom and prepare their animals for show—two columns, full-depth and continued on page four). Did his obviously sincere effort work in motivating participation in the Fair? We’ll have to wait for the Leader’s post mortem of the 1921 Fall Fair in a forthcoming edition.
Suffice to say that the Cowichan Exhibition as we know it today is still with us a century later.
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