Welcome to Lake Flashback. Reporter James Goldie has been combing through old newspapers with the assistance of the Kaatza Station Museum and Archives so we can jog your memory, give you that nostalgic feeling, or just a chuckle, as we take a look at what was making headlines this week around Cowichan Lake in years gone by.
This week around the Cowichan Lake…
10 Years:
One million dollars worth of marijuana has been removed from Crown land near Skutz Falls this week, discovered during a recent helicopter flyover.
The 562 plants were taken away and destroyed at a privately owned incinerator, the location of which was not disclosed.
Cpl. Brian Brown of the Lake Cowichan RCMP said he believes this is the biggest ever confiscation of marijuana in the Cowichan Lake area. Four police constables and an auxiliary officer spent one day removing the plants, which were in growing pots.
“The estimated street value of this is $1.12 million,” said Brown. “That’s $1 million worth of crime we’ve taken off the street.”
RCMP said it was evident someone had spent a lot of time watering and caring for the plants, which had buds longer than a foot, and three or more inches in diameter.
Police have spent the past month doing aerial surveillance over the south island. A smaller crop was found a few weeks ago.
25 years ago:
From the Lake News: “If you heard something on Saturday or Sunday like a large wasp or a small lawnmower and couldn’t figure what it was, it might have been the Cowichan Valley Thunderbirds who were hosting another annual get together of float plane enthusiasts from all over the Island.
“The planes, some with five-foot wingspans, took off from the lake, performed intricate acrobatics and landed again on the water, all radio-controlled by the enthusiasts on the beach.
“Some were models of existing full-sized planes, some dreamed up by would-be plane designers. A few were, well, a little strange. But all of them flew and brought many an ‘um’ and ‘ah’ from the farther sparse crowd that came to watch.
“As a way to spend a delightful afternoon free (there was no charge to see the show) it was a huge success.
“As a challenge to the Abbotsford Air Show for public attention, it fell a trifle short.”
40 years ago:
Barbara Wallace, the NPD MLA for Cowichan-Malahat, is slamming the provincial government for failing to oppose an application by the Canadian National Railway to abandon half of its Vancouver Island rail operations. The CNR has applied to abandon 90 kilometres between Victoria and Deerholme (near Cowichan Bay) and already has a pending application to abandon 42 kilometres of track between Youbou and Deerholme.
Wallace urged the Canada Transport Commissioner to deny CNR these bids.
“Loss of this trackage… would be a serious blow to the future industrial development of this sizeable portion of British Columbia and for enormously more expensive highway construction onto our taxpayers,” she said. “And yet our provincial cabinet never bothered to put in a word of protest.”
She also said that abandoning rail transportation would ignore the federal government’s efforts to promote energy conservation.
Compiled by James Goldie, Gazette
