March 10, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
March 10, 1921
The big story of the day must have sent chills down the spines of North Cowichan residents:
Tax Rate Will Total 19 Mills.
The Leader predicted that this would come as a shock to taxpayers who, while expecting an increase, hadn’t expected anything like this. (The previous year had been eight per cent.)
Broken down, the rates were as follows: Schools, 5 mills; debt, 1 mill; general rate, 13 mills; 10 per cent of improvements and 2 1/2 per cent on raw land.
Clrs. Rivett-Carnac and Green had argued for keeping the increase to 10 per cent but this would have been at the sacrifice of roads and creating an overdraft at the bank.
Council as a whole felt that manual training and domestic sciences were educational luxuries that should be paid for this year but put to the voters in a referendum as they didn’t think ratepayers should have to cover future expenses.
Two mills were necessary to cover the Mainguy Island road expropriation fiasco (explained in previous Chronicles) and there was the matter of having to purchase new equipment.
In the editor’s opinion, Council had had no choice but to approve “the extraordinary increase”.
The total assessed value of Municipal properties by five per cent.
Council also found enough in the kitty to grant the Chemainus Hospital, $400; King’s Daughters’ Hospital, $400; Cowichan Agricultural Society, $250; the Board of Trade, $100; the Cowichan Public Library, $10. (No, that’s not a typo!)
Clrs. Rivett-Carnac and Green favoured more for the hospitals but to no avail and a request for funding from the Cowichan Health Centre was refused
Council asked its road superintendent to look into Miss Mabel M. Patchett’s complaint that she held them responsible for an accident she sustained early in February whereby she sprained her ankle and ruptured some of the ligaments. The Chemainus woman’s heel had caught in some grass “and this caused her to fall into a ditch” near the roadside.
And it was agreed to hear W.E. Christmas’s appeal appeal against his 1920 assessment.
The quest for a suitable war memorial was again in the news, the committee in charge of the program reporting that only 32 people had responded to the ballot sent out to determine the various schemes presented to date. Twelve favoured a cairn at the courthouse; two voted for a tuberculosis ward at King’s Daughters’ Hospital; and 18 were for both a memorial cross in town and a cairn on Mount Prevost.
Although disappointed in the low response, the committee interpreted that to mean that the community as a whole trusted them to make the right decision so they’d proceed on the premise of a memorial cross and a cairn. Arthur Burchett was thanked for his submission of a design for the cross. They declared their intention to keep the public fully informed as they moved forward and geared up for a fundraising program in April.
Mining engineer and former employee of the Tyee Mine on Mount Sicker, William Brewer, was back in town. He’d paid a visit to the dormant King Solomon Mine on the Koksilah River which had come under new ownership and said he didn’t think that the reactivated Tyee Smelter at Ladysmith would succeed for lack of ore. But he did see potential in the old mines on Mount Sicker if the Lenora, Tyee and Richard III were reopened as a single entity rather than, as originally run, as three competing operations. A new oil flotation smelting process would make this feasible, he said. (Twenty years later he’d be proved right when the federal government sponsored this very scheme during the Second World War to mine not copper but vitally needed zinc and lead.)
He also suggested that the two adjacent silver mines, the King Solomon and the Bluebell, be merged; he didn’t think that prospects for successful copper mining on Mount Brenton were promising because of the low-grade ore and because of the E&N Railway land grant that meant there’d be the additional cost of a royalty on tonnage.
Because only three countries produced manganese he thought that the manganese mine on Hill 60, quiet since the end of the war, had potential.
The Consolidated School Board was considering several ways to increase classroom space, looking at a proposal by architect Douglas James to utilize the attic of the present building. A brick addition of two classrooms would cost about $9500 ($1000 less for frame construction) and a stand-alone frame structure for $7000. The board was leaning towards a brick building as the best long term solution but put the matter on hold.
The federal government had reneged on an agreement to expend $11,500 for a new wharf at Cowichan Bay, saying the province should pick up the tab, local farmers turned out en masse at the Agricultural Hall to hear firsthand reports of the recent United Farmers of B.C. convention, MLA Kenneth Duncan explained his views on the government’s establishing a provincial liquor control board (he was against it), and he criticized the open sale of near-beer by which young people were introduced to liquor.
Duncan City Council was making progress with its street improvement program, having hired a consultant from Vancouver, they were unhappy with the state of an E&N culvert north of the power house, and H.C. Mann was formally requested to cut down a maple tree bordering his property at the corner of York Road after numerous complaints that it was unsafe. Council also approved a street light for Marchmont Road.
As for placing a war memorial at the intersection of Front Street (Canada Avenue) and Station Street, they wanted to study the matter. (This is where, in fact, it would be erected.)
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