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:
Ted Burns, a fish biologist with the Cowichan Lake Salmonid Enhancement Society, outlines a series of negative impacts of an extremely dry summer, describing a number of “firsts” he witnessed as a result of the hot conditions.
The society worked hard over the summer at fry and fish salvaging, reporting low amounts of coho fry due to poor adult returns the previous fall.
“We felt it was very important to try and salvage every fish because of the low numbers. Total catch to date is 77,000,” he said.
“The [society’s] normal funding from Fisheries and Oceans was much reduced this year, but our budget was kindly supplemented with grants from TimberWest, the CVRD and Catalyst Paper.”
He went on to describe the impact the dry weather had had on the trees in the area, including a number of hemlock and cedar deaths.
“Some scientists are predicting that we will lose our cedars on Southern Vancouver Island with climate change — [both] east and west coasts,” he said.
25 years:
The New Democratic Party swept the Lake area during British Columbia’s provincial election last week, which saw the party achieving a majority government. The Social Credit party was “virtually wiped out” in the legislature, retaining only seven seats.
Jan Pullinger defeated Graham Bruce in the Cowichan-Ladysmith riding with 10,602 votes to his 6,644. Bruce was Minister of Municipal Affairs in the Social Credit government. Liberal candidate for Cowichan-Ladysmith, Tony Hennig, received 4,911 votes.
There was a voter turnout of 81 per cent.
Comparisons in the riding are impossible because of its boundary and name changes. In 1986 it was Cowichan-Malahat and was held by Barbara Wallace, who beat Bruce in 1983. The boundaries were changed in 1990 and the riding became Cowichan-Ladysmith.
According to the Lake News, in 1986 the Cowichan Lake area had voted solidly against Bruce, with 59 per cent voting NDP. Despite the redrawn boundaries, the outcome of this year’s election was very similar with 57 per cent of Cowichan Lake voting for the NDP.
40 years:
There is a smoking problem at Lake Cowichan Secondary School and the school board has established a special committee to study it.
The committee was formed at the board’s recent meeting when it learned that 123 smoking offences have been recorded in the school since last June. Offences typically occurred in the school washrooms, which led to messy, crowded washrooms and potential fire hazards according to principal Don Service.
Service asked trustees to consider allowing students to smoke in a designated area on school grounds, something other schools in the province have done. His proposal includes the school providing ashtrays and garbage cans, calling on students to help maintain the area, which would only be open to students 16 and older.
“There is no way that we are condoning smoking on or near school property,” he said, “but it is a problem we have to live with.”
The Lake News reported that “non-smoking parents were ‘horrified and offended’ that smoking should be allowed.”
Principal Service said that under present school policy students caught smoking for the first time have a letter sent to their parents. Second-time offenders are suspended from school.
If the board approves of the smoking area, it will have to change its current policy, which prohibits smoking on school property.
Compiled by James Goldie, Gazette
