Welcome to Lake Flashback. Reporter Lexi Bainas 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:
“Paldi public hearing gets earful of water” screamed the headline of the Lake Cowichan Gazette of April 25, 2007.
A plan for a 500-home subdivision two kilometres west of Paldi got everyone up in arms in the Skutz Falls area as homeowners lined up in large numbers to make known their concerns about the area’s aquifers and the possibility that their wells might go dry.
A long and loud public hearing, held at Lake Cowichan Secondary School, attracted 250 worried and angry people, the story said, and then presented a bit of the meat and potatoes of the hearing.
The most notable comment came from hydrogeologist Dennis Lowen, who, when speaking for the developer, Village of Paldi Enterprises, saying that “when water is taken out of an aquifer it is replaced with an equal amount of water,” then went on to tell an unbelieving crowd that “the faster you take water, the faster it is replaced.”
25 years ago:
The very idea!!
“Duncan is planning to elect a Miss Cowichan Valley,” the Lake Days Society learned in 1992.
The April 29 issue of The Lake News was all over that huge story, reporting that the members of the Lake Days Society “expressed shock and dismay” at the news because “Lake Cowichan has held the right to send a Cowichan Valley representative to the PNE for many years.”
Local pageant supporter Pat Weaver led the charge.
“Too right they have no right to do this,” said Pat Weaver of the Chamber of Commerce, who brought the news. She said she will telephone the manager of the Duncan-Cowichan Chamber of Commerce to complain.
A Miss Chemainus goes to the PNE but Duncan has not sent a representative to the fair.
The Lake News did a little front page editorializing, too.
“There have been rumours for years that Duncan is jealous of Lake Cowichan’s official connection with the PNE through the Lady of the Lake,” the story said.
“They’ll try to take it away from us,” warned a member.
“Council should be interested in this,” added Society president David Laing.
40 years ago:
The recent furore in Cowichan Bay about industrial properties in the estuary area is not new. However, back in 1977, Lake Cowichan’s Island Shake & Shingle was on the other side of the issue.
Under the headline “Shake mill decision imminent” we learn that the B.C. Supreme Court was that week finally looking at deciding on the legality of a North Cowichan bylaw that prevented IS&S from building on land in the estuary.
Island Shake & Shingle’s Bert Rodenbush said the final session of the hearing, held April 15 in Vancouver before Justice J. B. Ruttan, was taken up by counsel for North Cowichan, who presented the municipality’s side of the controversial issue. Island Shake cited nine counts against North Cowichan — most notable bias and discrimination against the Lake Cowichan-based company — in its bid to have the prohibitive zoning bylaw quashed.
Rodenbush said he expected a decision the following week.