November 25, 1921
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
November 25, 1921
How quiet it was in the Cowichan Valley, a century ago!
I've just finished reading today's Times Colonist and we appear to live in a world of catastrophe: COVID-19, flooding, fires, crime and drug addiction, trafficking and homelessness. Every day, a new disaster.
Ah, to go back in time to when things were calm and, more or less, predictable...maybe.
As for 1921, there was a provincial election in the offing and local favourite son Charles Dickie, mining operator, was going to run against a Nanaimo journalist and a Vancouver bookkeeper.
That's it in a nutshell; the rest of the report was a list of name after name after name of the nominators. (No wonder that the typesetters of old were, according to legend, serious alcoholics.)
In Duncan Council news City Clerk reported that he'd just been informed that the recent 10 per cent increase in telephone rates applied only to much larger communities than frontier Duncan. Mayor Pitt and Councillors Whidden, Smythe, Prevost and Dickie then enthusiastically endorsed a Victoria petition demanding "justice for the municipalities" or the provincial government's resignation.
(They didn't mince words, in the good old days.)
H.R. Garrard, the city electrician, reported that "a series of plugs at various points" was necessary so that power outages such as a tree falling across a high tension line, didn't knock out the entire system. And home porch lights were to be placed under the overhanging porch rather than hanging, exposed to the weather, on a wall.
The King's Daughters' Hospital was seeking permission to erect an isolation ward on its own property and within prescribed distancing; it was distinctly noted that this ward was not for tubercular patients.
When the weather improved, Ald. Whidden was to seek tenders for a sidewalk on Jubilee Street, between White Road and Third Street. It was said that this would be a great help to school children and the general public.
Lastly, Ald, Dickie informed Council that negotiations between the City and J. Weismiller for the care of the waterworks dam had fallen through.
There was a separate report concerning the proposed isolation ward at the KDH. It appears that local citizens were concerned about its possible use by tuberculosis patients; under provincial law, the Duncan hospital was required to accept patients to up to 10 per cent of its beds, in this case, four.
Consequently, the hospital was planning to erect a separate "four-roomed shack" (in the words of the Leader reporter) for a TB ward, separate to an isolation ward. Because of "criticisms and misinformation" the isolation ward was to be named the hospital annex.
There had been 32 in-patients and 10 out-patients in October, for an average of 18.1 per day. As of Jan. 1, 1922, janitor J. Glover's salary would be increased to $75 per month.
And bills totalling $196036 would be paid "when funds permit"(!)
In Victoria, the latest legislative session had been unproductive, in the mind of MLA Kenneth Duncan, who thought the legislature had degenerated into a battle ground for politics, rather than for the transaction of the business of the country",
Duncan had had its first real snow of the season and the Women's Auxiliary of the Great War Veterans Association had held a Fall craft show. Nor had the weather deterred the Ladies' Aid of the Duncan Methodist Church from holding their own well attended sale; early Christmas presents and needlework were the popular items of this event.
In particular, the flower stall managed by Mrs. H. Harris and Mrs. McNichol "made a very bright spot in one corner with its lovely carnations, chrysanthemums and flowering pots".
The IODE staged a rousing musical performance to a packed audience in the Opera House to raise funds for the Girl Guides.
The deadline had passed for entries in the fourth annual Poultry Exhibit; exhibitors were expected to come from as far as Nanaimo, Victoria and "other outside points". Curiously, the so-called 'poultry show' included rabbits and a single entry of a cat from Victoria!
The Cowichan Choral Society now had 80 members and 25 members of the Field Naturalists had met in the Women's Institute rooms for a discussion and display of insects by president A.W. Hanham. W.M. Fleming then spoke on the harm done to plants and crops by various insects and warned that slugs were on the increase. Mrs. G.G. Henderson showed some of her collection of shells and A. Colliard exhibited various star fish, crabs and sea spiders.
Two Japanese freighters had loaded prime Island first-growth cedar at the Genoa Bay mill which was otherwise idle because of the snow in the woods.
All in all, it had been a quiet week in the Cowichan Valley. If it all sounds deadly dull, would you prefer today's news with all its doom and gloom? As I've said before, the good old days, they're not making them any more!
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