October 7, 1920
What was happening a century ago this week from the front page of the Cowichan Leader.
October 7, 1920
With no fewer than 12 stories featured on the front page of the October 7, 1920 edition of The Leader it’s difficult to know which was meant to be the headline story. As the City and North Cowichan Councils shared equal billing with the Duncan Board of Trade, let’s begin with City Council.
Two years after Armistice, Council expressed amazement upon learning that the War Trophies Commission had allotted the City a single machine gun and a trench mortar.
It wasn’t near good enough!
Duncan, as the unofficial capital of the Cowichan Valley, had a “magnificent record” that deserved nothing less than the “best gun in the German Army”. Councillors agreed to ask MP J.C. McIntosh for a more befitting acknowledgement of the City’s contribution to the war effort. (The machine gun and mortar were on their way and expected to arrive within two weeks.)
Turning to the matter of properties forfeited to the City in lieu of taxes it was decided to put them up for sale for their assessed value plus eight per cent.
The Navy League was granted permission to hold a tag day on Trafalgar Day. Since the end of the war the League had devoted its efforts to building up the Canadian mercantile marine as a means of “safeguard[ing] the manning of British ships by British seamen”.
A request by Victoria Council for financial assistance in a common front against a movement to have churches exempted from paying property taxes was received sympathetically but was laid over until the next Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) convention when the matter could be taken up by all municipalities.
An awaited report on the state of the City Waterworks by a Vancouver consultant was also placed on hold because he was in a Victoria hospital recovering from appendicitis.
It was agreed that Mrs. Pitt, wife of the mayor, would represent the City at board meetings of the Health Centre.
Council was reminded that October 9th was officially confirmed as National Fire Prevention Day.
At the recent UBCM convention Duncan Council had urged the province to assume control of all police forces in B.C., sought an amendment of the Prohibition Act and a fixed share of teachers’ salaries.
North Cowichan Council had its own problems—mostly the lack of money. Not even the prospect of 200 school children having to eat their lunches in overcrowded lunch rooms could move Council to approve a request for $800 to build two outdoor shelters at Duncan Consolidated School, even though more than half of the students lived in the Municipality.
Clr. Smith put it more bluntly. Besides the lack of money, he didn’t think it appropriate that the students have their lunches in “outdoor sheds” during winter.
Council as a whole concurred; at least about the money.
Capt. T.D. Groves and F.W. Barber-Starkey then made a pitch for $750 towards a community hall at Westholme which, in their opinion, was the most neglected section of the Cowichan Valley. They already had $500 cash in hand, they said. Again Council, while expressing sympathy for Westholme’s proclaimed neglect, pleaded poverty. Better to lay it over until after the next election was their response.
Unlike Duncan, which was to receive two war mementos, even unsatisfactory ones, North Cowichan hadn’t had so much as a reply to their request of March 1918 for trophies of their own. The Great War Veterans Assoc. wanted Council to pursue the matter because “It was recognized throughout the British Empire that Cowichan had done its share to a greater extent than any other section and that the best trophies were none too good for the district.”
Ladysmith had received “four or five” machine guns and a field gun but North Cowichan Council wanted the trophies for distribution around the municipality.
The province had finally agreed to allowing the Municipality to to operate the Maple Bay government wharf provided it accepted the costs and responsibility of maintenance. Clr. Smith wasn’t pleased: only a few used the wharf and the structure would require expensive upkeep.
Reeve Herd and Clr. Hilton disagreed—the wharf was used by 100’s of people every day and would prove an asset.
That week, Duncan would host 40 members of the International Students Assoc. aka ‘Russellites,’ who’d been branded as being tools of Bolshevism in a pamphlet, a charge they denied to The Leader.
Belated recognition was paid to several of those who’d laboured to make the recent Fall Fair a success, and “noted explorer from Malay” Carveth Wells, had been permitted to deliver a series of talks to the local schools.
Two local residents had received belated honours for their war service. At a special ceremony in Victoria, Her Excellency the Duchess of Devonshire presented Col. G.E. Barnes with the insignia of Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and nursing sister Norah C. Denny received the Royal Red Cross, second class.
The local branch of the United Farmers of B.C. were addressed by MLA Kenneth Duncan on recent government initiatives such as the Mother’s Pension Act and a new Elections Act that included disenfranchising those who didn’t vote in the next election.
He reminded farmers that they had to make their views known and to present a united front.
At Genoa Bay two ships were to load lumber for Peru and Australia, William J.E. Brookbank had joined the staff of the Bank of Montreal, Duncan, and there was to be a plowing match on S.E. Williams’s Glenora farm.
The Board of Trade continued to press Ottawa for repairs to the Cowichan Bay wharf and sympathized with Chemainus parents of high school age children who didn’t number enough to have their own teacher. They had agreed to cost-sharing a bus service to the Duncan high school.
The cost (an estimated $500 per mile) of linking the Malahat by phone deterred B.C. Telephone from such an installation and Thetis Island residents had lost half of their government wharf in a recent storm. The Board wanted Ottawa to restrict commercial fishing “adjacent to” Cowichan Bay, and noted that 1920 was proving to be a hallmark year for returning coho salmon.
H.F. Prevost reported that the municipal camping ground had been popular that summer and profitable to the tune of $16.
The Board had contributed $50 toward the recent Imperial Press visit and another $50 for prizes at the Cowichan Fall Fair. Better road signs were needed for the Sahtlam-Lake Cowichan area.
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