As British Columbia was preparing for the beginning of the events celebrating our province's centennial, most newspapers in B.C. were publishing information about it. However there was a lot of other news happening, and below is a roundup of a few stories published on this day 50 years ago.
The Victoria Daily Times reported that the PNE had brought on a new assistant manager, John Skelton, a man who was the agricultural manager of the PNE in 1963.
The front page of The Province newspaper featured the story of a 2-year-old child found wandering on Powell St holding a paper bag with a clean towel, t-shirt, and a pair of socks. Abandoned and "absolutely unidentified children" were not uncommon then; the story notes that there were 2-3 showing up in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»every year.
The Sun (a whopping 109-page paper that day) published a similar story on their front page, but with the headline "'Little Girl Lost' Hasn't a Care" focusing on the child's good-natured personality. In the story, they quoted a nun at the church that took her in saying that they gave her some cookies when she arrived and instead of eating them she simply carried them around.
The Alberni Valley Times reported that Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Canucks GM Bud Poole announced that they were going to be playing a 10-game preseason exhibition series of games after they wrapped up their training camp which was to take place in... Calgary. Noted in the piece was also that the Canucks' farm team, the AHL's Rochester Americans, would begin their training camp in New York shortly after the Canucks.
The Times also reported that the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Stock Exchange had a fairly slow trading day with 1,442,400 shares being traded by noon the previous day. A large part of the page with the reporting features detailed numbers for "Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Oil", "Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Industrials", and "Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Mining" companies.
The Sun published more up-to-date numbers on the stock exchange, noting on their front page that "big volumes made for big gains"; the first hour of trading that morning, 564,534 shares had moved between traders.
The Sun also published a story about 27-year-old rocker Jim Morrison being found dead in Paris the previous Saturday.
Similarly grim news closer to home was in the Province as they announced a $1,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the killer of 16-year-old Catherine Barbara Laraway, who was shot five times in the head behind a hotel on Main Street, between Georgia and Union (a man was ultimately arrested for her murder 18 years later).
On a happier note, the Sun had a story about youth planting 60,000 douglas fir trees in Surrey and Delta.
Also, a full-page advertisement touted the 31st annual Sun Salmon Derby, which had a first prize of a 17-foot Hourston Glascraft boat, manufactured in North Vancouver.
A letter from Mrs Gottschau who lived at 382 Powell St (yes, they used to publish the home addresses of people who wrote in) laments that "businessmen" weren't employing all the "longhairs" that they complain about, with "sheepish rigidty."
