February 24, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
February 24, 1921
North Cowichan Council chambers presented a very animated scene, as the Leader so quaintly put it, when those for and against blasting restrictions appeared to present their respective cases. Against were poultry farmers who were then raising chicks in incubators and for whom loud explosions were detrimental; for were those who wanted to go about their business of road building, construction, mining and land clearing without hindrance. Appearing for the latter interests was Capt. G.H. Hadwen who argued that the majority should rule and, besides, the poultry men hadn’t proved their contention.
Mrs. B.C. Walker told Council how blasting had caused injury to eggs and machines, knocking over thermometers that were critical to incubation, and there was a possibility of the incubator lamps being snuffed with further danger of smoke and fire. She was speaking from experience, she said, having seen the results of blasting from a distance of only 50 yards.
Noted Westholme farmer L.F. Solly told of a Vancouver farmer who’d lost 1000 eggs to blasting. He said the concussion of blasts from 10-20 sticks of powder could be felt for a quarter-mile radius. On a more sinister note, he suggested that an unfriendly neighbour could harm hatching chicks by deliberately blasting close by.
R.G. Mellin offered a curious analogy. The demand of poultry men was like “a man carrying a ladder in a crowded street. He was steering clear of those in front, but paying no heed to those behind”. He said it was difficult to draw a radius of half a mile without stepping on someone’s toes. He thought a permit system for those wishing to blast would accommodate everyone’s needs but he was against an outright ban on blasting operations during seasonal incubation periods.
Cases of blasting and poultry operations co-existing were cited; even the great San Francisco earthquake hadn’t harmed the poultry business, said Hadwen without declaring his source of information.
So it went, for and against, and only ended, temporarily at least, when Reeve Paitson advised both camps that they’d have to come back to Council with some form of compromise. As for the requests for grants from the Agricultural Society, the King’s Daughters’ Hospital and the Chemainus General Hospital, these would have to be discussed by the finance committee. But, he warned, he and Clr. Ashby were already convinced that any grants would have to be cut back this year because of the Municipality’s financial position.
Premier John Oliver’s Liberal party in the B.C. Legislature was presenting a bill that would establish a government-owned liquor distribution system, the result of the recent referendum that ended Prohibition. Proposed were a license fee of $5 per annum and a $1 per month fee for selling alcoholic beverages, the profits to be split equally between the province and municipalities although the latter were responsible for policing sales.
Local Independent MLA Kenneth Duncan was opposed to any kind of private sales; liquor should be sold in sealed packages only by “government vendors and government vendors only”.
The Swallowfield Farm expropriation appeal was coming up in County Court, a case of unpaid wages was found in the plaintiff’s favour, as was the case of a man who’d been charged for repairs to a vehicle he was driving as a demonstrator before buying it.
Well-known restauranteur Chew Deb was also in court, successfully seeking to overturn an $85 fine he and others had had to pay for allegedly serving liquor without a license.
Five men charged under the Indian Act for holding an illegal potlatch were given suspended sentences by Magistrate Maitland-Dougall before a packed courtroom. The men had pleaded guilty and the sympathetic magistrate used his discretion to come down lightly. Their only recourse, he advised, was to get the Indian Act amended.
The directors of the King’s Daughters’ Hospital, with $1000 in the bank to build an isolation ward for tuberculosis patients, denied that the decision to begin construction had been made. They were waiting for a provincial government grant and would make the final commitment then.
After a lengthy discussion directors voted to decline a $350 grant from the City of Duncan because it was conditional upon the City being absolved of any financial responsibility for “indigents.”
The hospital had averaged 17.8 patients over the previous month.
Local stock breeders had agreed to create a directory of pure bred animals, to encourage local farmers to upgrade their stock and to publicize any cow capable of producing 50 pounds of butter in a month.
Merger talks between the B.C. Fruit Growers and the B.C. Berry Growers Associations were ongoing. The latter industry was on a roll, it being predicted that harvests would increase by 400-500 per cent in the coming year.
The Ladies’ Aid of the Methodist Church had held a successful auction sale and the Cowichan Women’s Institute staged the “farcial [sic] comedy” Jane before a packed audience in the Opera House.
Finally, efforts to sign up householders to buy bonds to finance extension of electric power lines to Somenos had encountered only two refusals so far, both of them said to be surprising.
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