819 replies to this topic

[todd]

Think we found this in a wall along time ago:

April 14 1970

Edited by todd, 21 August 2020 - 10:48 AM.

[aastra]

"It was a simpler time on the quiet streets of Victoria."

[todd]

Is the bomb still in the shed?

[Rob Randall]

"...once a service has started it can't be interrupted."

 

WTF

[Sparky]

^ 1:30 AM?

[todd]

I’m sure you’re both being culturally insensitive.

[todd]

$5,000 bail for attempted murder?

[aastra]

He ended up getting a 2-year sentence.

[todd]

He ended up getting a 2-year sentence.

Yes next to the gun quiz.

[aastra]

Some critics might say the modern CoV has had an ongoing obsession with altering street layouts and traffic flows:

 

 

Daily Colonist
December 10, 1968

St. Joseph's Plans 400 Beds for Academy Grounds

The city proposes to extend Belleville Street through the academy grounds, and the land for the new hospital will lie to the north of this new road.

[aastra]

I assume this was an early idea in that evolving vision which included the Fairfield overpass that never happened and the eventual realignment of Blanshard to merge gracefully with Belleville.

 

And after that, the problems were fixed forever...

[Rob Randall]

For the better part of a century Victoria was obsessed with creating a seamless, barrier-free, north-south loop through town. That goal transitioned smoothly into a program of barriers and traffic-calming.

[Rob Randall]

August 28, 1920, one century ago.

 

Bike theft is rampant today but I can't imagine the local paper devoting several inches to one instance, nor can I imagine a prosecutor pressing charges, let alone a significant amount of jail time.

 

[Mike K.]

Back then that was enough to satisfy the Theft over $3 threshold, so off he went.

[aastra]

Endless loop:

 

 

Daily Colonist
January 18, 1980

Canada must find ways to reduce the cost of housing

The home-building industry is subject to massive, and suffocating regulation by municipal councils and procrastinating provincial governments. Municipal councils seek only so much new housing, whose increase in tax revenues will offset the increased costs for services created by the additional housing units. Municipal councils are aggressively ingenious in finding pretexts for postponing the building of housing projects, and for raising the costs of building.

The greatest deterrent to more reasonably priced housing consists of the zoning laws which reserve excessive amounts of vacant land for industrial purposes, and require unrealistically low densities for housing.

These unrealistic housing densities result in the voracious devouring of this nation's limited stock of prime agricultural land, to little good effect. They render uneconomic the provision of public transportation to new housing subdivisions...

Canadian municipalities should allow new, ground-level housing of from 12 to 40 units an acre, which would be comparable to the densities of ground-level housing in the older neighbourhoods of many Canadian cities.

...future industrial projects must be built, wherever possible, in units which are flush with streets, and from two to 10 stories in height.

...The day must come when every Canadian family has decent housing at reasonable cost.

 

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Daily Colonist
April 7, 1973

Will Homes Outprice Selves from Market?

The average price of new and old houses sold in Greater Victoria has increased by more than $6,000 since 1969...

In 1969, the average house sold for $22,606; during the first two months of 1973 that figure had risen to $29,289, an increase of 29.56 per cent.

Eric Charman, president of Victoria Real Estate Board, said Friday the price of houses will continue to climb as long as there are increases in the price of building materials and in wages.

One way to combat the rising house prices, Charman stressed, was to allow maximum use of land within urban areas.

"But as long as you have politicians who tell you not to build highrises, the demand for single-family homes will continue to increase, pushing prices up and up," he said.

"There is also the enormous difficulty in getting permission to subdivide land and the trouble in getting it rezoned. This, too, helps increase the price of houses."

The CP survey says that major realtors across Canada expect house prices to level off eventually, but for the moment all signs point to continuing phenomenal increases.

It attributes the increases to "a rich blend of inflation psychology, a real housing shortage, optimism in the economy, a growing demand for houses by young people, and pure speculative buying."

Edited by aastra, 31 August 2020 - 08:09 AM.

[Nparker]

 

...The day must come when every Canadian family has decent housing at reasonable cost.

Well that day wasn't January 18, 1980, and it's not August 31, 2020. Let's check back in the spring of 2061 and see if we've achieved the goal.

[aastra]

Copied from another thread. Beacon Hill Park is always in the crosshairs, generation after generation:

 

 

Daily Colonist
July 31, 1970

Retiring Parks Boss:
Destruction of Beauty Price of Progress

The words don't come easily to (Herb) Warren, who has headed the city's parks department for almost 40 years.

"I don't want to criticize the people I've worked with, but the conflict between the ever-increasing demand for land to accommodate public buildings and a city's need to a clean and beautiful environment worries every parks administrator," he said.

"It's unfortunate that the elected representatives prefer to take the position of least resistance to schemes presented by traffic engineers. Politicians seem to be willing to destroy more and more parkland to accommodate public buildings rather than purchase land elsewhere,"

"A good example of this attitude is the construction of Victoria's new swimming pool in Central Park."

"Beacon Hill Park has been proposed as a site for every major public building ever constructed in Victoria, including the provincial museum," he said.

"If it hadn't been for the original terms of the trust deed, there would be no park today." (The park was given in trust to the city by the province in the late 1880s.)

[Rob Randall]

1972:

 

[aastra]

Some earlier chapters in the city government's ongoing mission to preserve and celebrate Beacon Hill Park:

 

 

Daily Colonist
February 11, 1913

Nearby Owners Protest

The protest of a number of owners of the Fairfield district at the opening of a gravel pit in Beacon Hill Park was considered by the City Council last night. Recently, the city engineer opened the pit for the purpose of securing materials for repairing the park driveways, and the owners point to the pit as an eyesore and a deprecatory influence on the appearance of the park, further injured by the cutting down of trees where the pit has been opened. The petition of protest was signed by a large number of neighboring residents. It was referred to the city engineer and the chairman of the Parks Committee for report.

 

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Daily Colonist
March 25, 1913

Sir -- I live near the entrance to Beacon Hill Park, at the end of Cook Street, but I do not doubt that most citizens, in whatever part of the city they may live, will agree with the residents in this vicinity, that it is time a stop was made, and immediately, to the cutting down of trees and the making of an unsightly gravel pit at the southeast corner of the park. Some few weeks ago a largely signed petition was, I believe, presented to the Mayor and Council in connection with this matter. No attention evidently has been paid to it, as not only is gravel still being taken, but nine fine fir trees, averaging about one foot in diameter, have been slaughtered in the past few days and the death of others seems to be contemplated. These trees, aside from their beauty, are valuable as a windbreak and in any case, there can be no good reason to cut them down, unless to obtain a few loads of poor gravel can be called one.

James Holmes
25 Chester Street

 

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Daily Colonist
February 16, 1917

BANTAMS' BARRACKS TO BE DEMOLISHED

The Bantams' barracks in Beacon Hill Park are to be demolished. Mayor Todd and Alderman Dilworth, chairman of the parks committee, decided on this yesterday at a conference in the park. The buildings were erected just a year ago by the city at a cost of $9,000. The purpose of the erection of the buildings by the city was to secure Victoria as the centre of the mobilization and training of the only Bantam Battalion in Western Canada.

Now that the battalion has gone overseas the barracks are vacant, involving a continual expenditure on the part of the city for cleaning out and guarding the buildings. The city will call for tenders to be in by March 5, for the sale of all stoves, heating apparatus and other equipment and the demolishing of the buildings. The contractor is to keep the lumber.

 

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Daily Colonist
May 22, 1917

Must Take Away His Building
Unless the man who bought from the city one of the buildings of the Bantam Barracks at Beacon Hill Park, removes the building within one week there will be trouble for him. Alderman Dilworth gave fair warning of this at the Council meeting last night. All the other buildings were removed some time ago before the stipulated date. The city can now, if it cares to, confiscate this man's deposit and resell the building. The parks committee is anxious to get the grounds cleaned up for Spring.

 

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Our word for the day (and for the past ~140 years) is:

Hypocrisy:
Dissimulation of one's real character or belief; especially, a false assumption of piety or virtue; a feigning to be better than one is; the action or character of a hypocrite.

Edited by aastra, 08 September 2020 - 08:06 AM.

[aastra]

--

 

 

Daily Colonist
April 21, 1963

"Children Not Allowed Here"

This is a subject that no sensitive person wants to think about, much less talk about.

I am talking about Beacon Hill Park, our pride and joy of a park...

What a pity it is not safe for children.

What a shame that children have more to fear in the park than they do in the hustle and traffic of Douglas or Government Street.

Why can't unattended children enter the make-believe world of that park? Why can't they take a walk through its leafy lanes, transported in imagination to never-never lands impossible to see on city streets?

They can't because it's too dangerous. The city police know it's dangerous, and the parks departments knows it's dangerous.

But a lot of parents do NOT know. I think they should be warned.

We see signs warning us of savage dogs. We can't post signs about uncontrolled, mentally sick people because that is too horrifying, but we could let parents know.

...a woman I know told me about her two daughters. They are eight and 11 years old...

The children approached the park from Dallas Road, and took a short-cut through what is known as Lover's Lane and it was here that a man jumped out at them.

...a woman came into this newspaper office. She had left her 12-year-old daughter in the "official" playground by the swings to mind the baby buggy her small son was being pushed around in. The mother went across the street to buy ice-cream cones. When she came back and elderly man had her daughter by the arm, and was pulling at her. The area there is not even particularly wooded.

...we found the police officers sympathetic, even angry about these things. Sexual offenders often don't get as big a sentence as a man who steals a loaf of bread.

The police said, yes, the park was a bad area. Molestations or scares to children were not a bit unusual in Beacon Hill Park.

"Molesting does take place in there. We hear of it a fair bit."

Why can't we hire five or ten men to patrol Beacon Hill Park? Surely our children are worth as much as a civic fountain? Or underground wiring? Or flower baskets?

It may be that the salary of a commissionaire is less than that of a police officer. Even if the commissionaires are older men, they are an effective deterrent to the kind of deviate that hides in parks waiting for children in the middle of the afternoon.

 

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Daily Colonist
May 1, 1963

$3,000 for Extra Park Patrol

City council yesterday took quick and decisive action to meet the threat of molesters in Beacon Hill Park.

It agreed unanimously to spend an additional $3,000 to put another commissionaire on duty in the park during daylight hours for the next few months and also approved purchase of a walkie-talkie radio for $1,000.

Ald. Millard Mooney, chairman of the special committee to discuss to matter with the police commission, raised the question at yesterday's budget session.

He said the purchase of the portable radio transmitter received was a matter of considerable urgency.

"We can't wait even a couple of days until the end of the budget sessions,"

"This is an emergency. We must get the order in at once."

...the two-way radio would enable the commissionare on duty to alert police when a suspicious character is spotted in the park or in the case of an actual molesting.

In either case police would be on the spot within minutes, he said. A plain clothes man would be placed in the park to shadow suspects. Routine police patrols of the park area have been doubled.