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 ago:
The Island Savings strike has ended after four-and-a-half months. Seventy-nine employees, including seven in Lake Cowichan, will be returning to work no later than Friday after members of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 15 voted 57 per cent in favour of a three-year contract. The vote took place after several sessions with mediator Vince Ready.
The new agreement includes pay increases of three per cent, 3.2 per cent and 3.5 over the next three years, retroactive to July 1.
“With just 57 per cent voting for this, I suspect there will be some hard feelings for a while,” said COPE business agent Linda Karpowich.
The Lake Cowichan branch was closed on Nov. 21 due to the strain the two management employees were under; they had been working six days a week.
25 years ago:
Neal Millbank, a provincial government consultant, was in Lake Cowichan this week as part of the Highway Link Study that will include a new road to Port Renfrew. He is examining the user benefits and costs, as well as the potential economic benefits for the area that would come with this highway and its construction.
“I have also been asked to look at the Vancouver Island impact,” he said.
Millbank met with Mayor Early Darling and Sheila Kenyon of the town’s economic development committee.
The Lake News reported Millbank is interested in the Lakeview Park development plans, the growth of Nitinat as a leading wind surfing centre and other proposals in the planning stages that would be affected by the creation of a paved highway.
40 years ago:
Lake Cowichan is in desperate need of a new dentist.
Dave Sharp is currently the only dentist serving the Lake Cowichan trading area, with a population of more than 6,000. The overworked dental practitioner has wined and dined potential candidates over the 20 years since he first took up practice here.
He encouraged Dick Bell to start up in Lake Cowichan, however, Bell had difficulty.
Art Neiser, co-owner of a new building on South Shore Road, has been trying to attract a new dentist to town for months and has spent hundreds of dollars advertising in national daily papers and dental journals but still to no avail.
“There are pages and pages of ads for dentists in the journals,” Sharp said. “Basically they can pick wherever they please.”
Perhaps Manfred Tempelmayr in the Lake News put it best: “Getting an appointment with a dentist in Lake Cowichan is something akin to finding teeth in a hen’s mouth.”
Compiled by James Goldie, Gazette
