June 9, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
June 9, 1921
Duncan ratepayers voted down a bylaw that would have extended electricity to outlying areas at a cost of $7500. Of 320 potential voters 90 made it to the polls and voted 68-21 against.
Apparently Council had been sure of approval but “a vigorous campaign was waged against the measure immediately preceding the voting,” reported The Leader.
Disappointed, no doubt, were the residents of Norcross, McKinnon and Herd roads who were hoping to be able to link to the city-owned grid. Disappointed, too, was Council who’d projected an $800-1000 annual profit from the sale of debentures if the new hook-ups had included barns and outbuildings.
Another mild disappointment was that experienced by Mrs. J. Hutchinson, a member of the Koksilah Golf Club, who came in second in a Victoria tournament.
The South Cowichan Tennnis Cluh beat their Nanaimo competitors on their home court of rain-slicked grass. They’d have to meet the Nanaimo players on their own turf next time.
The “married men put one over the single men” in a baseball match, thus proving (noted The Leader, tongue in cheek) that it paid to be married “sometimes”.
Five local and prominent Jersey breeders participating in a Jersey Jubilee in Oregon were given a guided tour of local dairy farms and were impressed that almost all milk production in the Tillamook area went to the production of cheese. They also noted that young, future farmers were being encouraged by a program that sounds much like today’s 4-H Club.
A tour of a local creamery which paid 29 cents wholesale per pound of butter made them doubly pleased with their own Cowichan Creamery Co-op which paid them 50 cents per pound.
Henry Robinson of Sahtlam had the first commercial crop of strawberries which were snapped up by Cowichan Merchants store. Many local farmers were awaiting the results of their initial crops of these succulent berries to determine whether or not to continue growing them for the wholesale market.
The Red Cross was seeking donations for its new peacetime cause, the foundation of health centres, and assured donors that 80 cents of every dollar raised remained in the community. (The 20 cents also went to the health centres but elsewhere.)
Some 50 delegates from around the province attended the annual convention of the King’s Daughters. Meetings and a tour of the Duncan (King’s Daughters’) Hospital were followed by a garden party that was open to the public,
Prominent local mining man C.H. Dickie guided George C. McKenzie, an inspector from the federal munitions board, around the manganese mine on Hill 60, the only mine of its kind in Canada.
The MacGregor Logging Co. had built a new landing at Crofton and was also busy filling a Mainland order for telephone poles. A number of Crofton ladies had motored to Duncan to attend an Anglican Ladies’ Auxiliary garden party.
Census taker A.J. Bailey of Westholme had an exciting encounter while cycling home from Somenos. What he first took to be a log lying beside the road proved to be a cougar. Throwing down his bicycle, Bailey headed for the nearest house, that of Horace Davie, to borrow a gun. Meeting Miss Florence Davie and Jack Underwood who were herding cattle, she ran home for her rifle and three cartridges.
(Note: her own gun—women were up to the challenges of frontier life, too!)
The poor panther, which turned out to be only part grown, blind in both eyes and undernourished, was still there and quickly dispatched, the threesome to share the $40 bounty which had just been raised from $25.
Miss Mary von Allman, 65, of Koksilah passed away after two weeks in the Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria; she’d formerly lived on the historic Keating Estate, Glenora. Capt. G.R.A. Gell was in a Vancouver hospital but was said to be progressing well. Y. Asada had discontinued buying barberry bark, to the disappointment of locals, and the Rev. C.A. Dockstader was leaving the Koksilah Mission to be replaced by a Mr. Gibson.
Two dozen members of the Cowichan Field Naturalists’ Club had enjoyed a holiday weekend outing to Skutz Falls and had captured three butterflies, including a specimen of papilio zolicaon, rarest of the three species of Swallowtails.
Finally—the Dominion Government had agreed to repair the Cowichan Bay wharf to the tune of $7500. Incredibly, the prime minister had overruled the Treasury Board to approve the expenditure. The wharf was long known to be rotten and the first 60 feet had already been removed as unsafe. Also in the works was release of a federal report on the state of the fisheries that the Duncan Board of Trade had been pursuing for a year.
From Tzouhalem volunteer weather reporter Brig.-Gen. C.W. Garside-Spaight informed The Leader that precipitation over the previous five months was 1.78 inches over average although there had been a slight decline in May. Total rain and snow for the first five months of the year was 18.87 inches.
(I wonder how this compares with 2021 and global warming.)
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