Welcome to Lake Flashback. Reporter Sarah Simpson 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 area…
10 years ago
“Promotional video proposal presented to council” was the top headline of the May 21, 2014 edition of the Lake Cowichan Gazette.
“The Town of Lake Cowichan is one step closer to producing a promotional video for the Cowichan Lake area after a local film producer showed up at the town hall last week. Producer Nick Versteeg, who helped orchestrate productions of ‘Once Upon a Day… Cowichan’ and ‘Resilience’ outlined his proposal to council at last Tuesday’s Finance and Administration Committee meeting. The move comes after an instigation by former CVRD Area I (Youbou/Meade Creek) director Klaus Kuhn who presented the idea to council last month.
“’I was approached by Klaus Kuhn to do something on the economic development of the Cowichan Lake area and a promotional video,’ said Versteeg at the meeting. ‘We have an enormous amount of footage already shot at the lake from Resilience. The key would be to find a couple of business people, who have established themselves here, to tell a story.’”
In other news, “SD79 budget cuts less painful this year” was the headline but the news was there were budget cuts yet again.
“The budget process hasn’t been as painful as last year for School District 79. Official Trustee Mike McKay gave third and final reading last Wednesday to the 2014-15 annual budget bylaw in the amount of $80,099,431. A year ago, the district was forced to close several schools as a budgetary measure and eventually elected to go with an elementary-secondary school configuration across the valley.
“’There hasn’t been any drastic cuts,’ said SD79 secretary-treasurer Bob Harper. ‘We have less money than we had last year. We certainly didn’t get a free pass.’”
25 years ago
How could they not start the story titled “Oscar Meyer talent search here in June” on the front of the May 26, 1999 edition of the Lake News with the famous song?
“Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener — and then the world would be in love with me! We all know that little ditty from the commercial! We have been seeing for years — the cute kid with the hotdog. Well, now that wish may come true for some children — they can’t be a wiener but they might become an Oscar Meyer kid. The Oscar Meyer Wiener Talent Search is coming to Lake Cowichan — It will be here for Lake Days and will begin at 1 p.m.”
Apparently the talent search was one of just eight Canadian stops and one of just two in B.C. that year.
In other events of the day, “As people gathered at the Bell Tower School Saturday to see who this year’s recipient was of the TimberWest Heritage Award, no known prize winner showed up.”
Susan Lowe wrote a first-person account of the event.
“‘I don’t know where the prize winner is,’ Barry Volkers told the Lake News.
“‘Who is the winner this year?’ [Lowe] asked the question. ‘I don’t know, they are keeping it a secret,’ said Volkers ‘Maybe too much of a secret — did anyone tell the winner?’ I joked?
“The truth was no one did tell the winner because everyone expected the winner to be there — and he was. He just didn’t know he had won. Barry Volkers was named winner of the 11th Annual TimberWest Heritage Award. The award was presented by Steven Lorimer, Land Use Forester of TimberWest, along with Mildred Untereiner, Administrative Assistant of the Ecomuseum in Duncan. Untereiner read out the nomination for Volkers and before her first sentence was finished, smiles and whispers spread through the room — everyone, including Volkers knew who the winner was.”
40 years ago
“Unemployed urged to fight back” was the big headline on top of the Lake News of May 23, 1984.
“Unemployed workers can help each other in tangible ways if they band together, a small group of Cowichan Lake district residents was told last week. Walter Tickson, secretary of the Nanaimo, Duncan and District Labor Council, made the suggestion at a special meeting called to urge the unemployed in this area to form an ‘action committee.’
“Tickson said, giving examples of the sort of action that could be taken. His group had found that some unemployed people were being pushed around by their welfare workers, he said. A two-and-a-half hour stint of picketing outside provincial welfare offices by a crowd of 40 or 50 people from the unemployed action committee resulted in a meeting with the regional manager.”
And finally, “LCSS students hit hard by changes: principal” was another top headline.
“High school students in the Cowichan Lake area are being forced into difficult decisions about their futures because of the education ministry’s decision to revamp the education of senior students, according to Stephen Shaw, principal of Lake Cowichan Secondary School. Shaw expressed concern at the May meeting of the school board education committee that a small school such as LCSS may not be ‘flexible’ enough to allow students to keep their options open.
“In talking to current Grade 9 students — the first ones who will graduate under the new system — counsellors at LCSS have found cause for concern already, he said: ‘There has been, as we had anticipated, a very definite reluctance to spend time seriously considering the directions that they hope to work in as they go through the next four or five years,’ he said. Shaw said that he thought Grade 9, and even Grade 10, was early for such considerations — ‘perhaps too early.’ These decisions can affect the training and eventual careers of students and have long-term effects, he said.”