Welcome to Lake Flashback. Reporter Lexi Bainas has been combing through oldnewspaperswiththeassistance of the Kaatza Station Museum and Archives so we can jog yourmemory, giveyouthat nostalgicfeeling, or just a chuckle, as we take a look at what was makingheadlines thisweekaround Cowichan Lake in years gone by.
This week around the Cowichan Lake area…
10 years ago:
“Float plane crashes on its way back to Lake Cowichan” says the Lake Cowichan Gazette of Oct. 17, 2007.
“An investigation began Sunday into what caused the crash of a Cessna 172 float plane that crashed Saturday afternoon on a return flight from Bamfield to Lake Cowichan, killing the pilot and two passengers. The names of the three people had not been released at the Gazette’s deadline on Monday afternoon.
“However, Staff Sergeant Lee Milusik of the Port Alberni RCMP said a 28-year-old Victoria man, a 56-year-old German man and a 34-year-old German woman died in the crash.
The plane, owned by Parallel Aviation, had flown to Bamfield earlier in the day and was making its return trip when it went down in an isolated area about 25 kilometres west of Cowichan Lake. A search for the plane by a Buffalo aircraft began after a call from Parallel Aviation that the Cessna was overdue.
The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria also received reports from high flying aircraft that they heard an emergency locator transmitter. Armed Forces 442 Search and Rescue Squadron from Canadian Forces Base Comox located the crash site and search and rescue specialists were lowered by a Cormorant helicopter.
The bodies were removed from the wreckage.
25 years ago:
“We’ll get 911 system by February” shouted a headline on the front page of The Lake News.
“The 911 emergency service will begin in the next two years. The Village of Lake Cowichan including Areas F and I will have access to 911 as will the entire CVRD. Total cost is expected to be $2.3 million.”
Frank Raimondo, administrator of the CVRD, told The Lake News that the CVRD received approval for the implementation of 911 at their last board meeting. The start-up target date was expected to be January 1994.
Although the entire cost was $2.3 million, Raimondo said the CVRD received a Go BC grant of $750,000 to help defray costs to the taxpayer.
There was to be a one-time tax the first year to help pay the capital costs of the system. The total capital cost was expected to be $1.5 million.
“What this means is that for a home owner, whose home is worth $120,000 the tax rate will be $47,” Raimondo said. The one-time tax rate was to be implemented in 1993.
40 years ago:
It’s not often you see a Canadian legend on the front pages of The Lake News. But on Oct. 19, 1977, new NDP candidate for the riding of Cowichan/Malahat/the Islands, Jim Manly was shown with the man he was replacing: Tommy Douglas.
Yes, while many people know Douglas’s name and fame, largely as the father of medicare, not many know that he represented this area at the end of his career. He was not the first famous federal politican to find a new political home on Vancouver Island. John A. Macdonald did the same, nearly 100 years earlier, in 1878.
Manly, then 44 years old, was chosen in the first ballot and went on to be elected to the House of Commons.
In 2012, his name was in the news again when he joined those in the Mediterranean who were supporting Palestinian activists during an Israeli blockade and was among those arrested.
lexi.bainas@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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