Dateline: July 4, 1969
Department of Highways crews and Taghum Hill residents were busy cleaning up Thursday following a flash flood that caused extensive road and property damage. No official estimate of damage was available but no major damage to houses in the area was reported. The flood hit the area at approximately 9:45 p.m. Wednesday when a culvert carrying Sandy Creek across the highway became plugged.
Sudden heavy rainfall increased the normal flow of the creek with several houses below the highway suffering water and mud damage with debris piled six feet high against them. The force of the water carried rocks and huge boulders along with it cutting the highway in two places and damaging quite severely. This resulted in the collapse of one stretch nearly 20 feet long. The highway will probably not be passable this week.
Dateline: July 7, 1969
The Midsummer Festival was kicked off Saturday afternoon by the Jaycees-sponsored parade which attracted nearly 70 entries this year. The weatherman provided full co-operation on the weekend, making the opening two days of the week-long festivities a huge success. Pretty girls were everywhere — on both the floats and in the streets — to add to the radiance of the event. Several bands also participated.
The West Kootenay Pollution Control Association was awarded a special prize in the parade for their entry calling for clean air and water. The float, in the form of a funeral procession with the pollution emblem — a dead bird — riding the lead car, depicted the death of clean air and water in Nelson. Later, the Police Association-sponsored canoe jousting, canoe racing and bathtub races were all huge successes with the thousands of people on hand enjoying every moment of competition.
Dateline: July 17, 1969
Major improvements in Nelson’s downtown environment and in merchandising methods are necessary if the city hopes to attract its full share of the regional commercial trade.
In their comprehensive plan for the City of Nelson, Vancouver town planners Rawson and Wiles charge that “At the present time merchandising in Nelson is, for the most part, badly out of date.” The planners say the “traditional architecture” in the downtown core is “second to none in B.C.” but most of this architecture is lost behind “pseudo-modern facades.”
“The traditional character of these buildings should be emphasized and new buildings should relate to the existing buildings,” they recommended. Because Nelson downtown core covers only a small area, it should be developed to handle casual, pedestrian-oriented shopping.
The compactness of the core should be developed through landscaping of walkways, the addition of street furniture, co-ordinated painting and sign schemes, and selective improvement of parking. The plan notes that downtown improvement is essential to developing a year-round tourist industry.
Dateline: July 20, 1969
Man came to the moon and walked its dead surface Sunday, July 20. Two American astronauts from the spaceship Apollo 11 landed on the Sea of Tranquility at 4:18 p.m. EDT. Six hours later, both stepped to the lunar surface. The first was Neil Armstrong. He set foot on the moon’s alien soil at 10:56 p.m. His first words were: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Buzz Aldrin followed and said: “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. A magnificent desolation.” Armstrong stepped cautiously, almost shuffling at first. “The surface is fine and powdered like powdered charcoal to the soles of my foot,” he said. “I can see my footprints of my foot in the fine particles.”
His footsteps were cautious in the one-sixth gravity of the moon but he quickly reported: “There is no trouble to walk around.”
“It has a stark beauty all its own,” Armstrong said. “It’s different. But it’s pretty out there.” The television camera on the side of the Eagle was on him constantly.
Dateline: July 25, 1969
A wildcat walkout Thursday of about 350 employees of Kootenay Forest Products Ltd., closed down the company’s sawmill and plywood operations here. About 60 employees in the maintenance sawmill and planer mill division walked off the job at 2 p.m. after a 1½-hour lunchroom sit-in in a dispute over the suspension of a maintenance division employee.
The entire operation was shut down at 4:30 when employees in the company’s plywood division failed to report for work on the afternoon shift. It is the first time the plant has been shut down in a labour dispute since IWA members went back to work in May 1968, after a 7½ month strike that affected most of the interior. Company officials were meeting late last night with employee representatives to try and end the walkout.