This week in local history, Feb. 26 to March 4:
Feb. 26, 1919: The City of Prince George planned to call for tenders for firewood suppliers for wood to heat the city's public buildings - including city hall, the hospital, fire hall and schools.
"This agreement was arrived at when bills for firewood totalling over $400 were presented to the council for payment last Thursday night," The Citizen reported. "A feature of the accounts commented on by the aldermen was that no two of the bills agreed in the price per cord."
In today's dollars, the City of Prince George's firewood bill was more than $5,000. But, to put it into a more accurate perspective, consider that a job posting in that same edition of the paper for a "girl for general housework" offered a wage of $30 per month, plus room and board. The city was spending more on firewood than a live-in housekeeper would earn in a year.
That's a lot of wood.
Feb. 29, 1940: Prince George, or rather Fort George, may have been a way point for the epic journey taken by the first know piece of mail sent in British Columbia, The Citizen reported.
"The first known letter to be sent in British Columbia was forwarded in 1811 by David Thompson from a point on the Columbia River to an officer in charge of the pioneer trading post at Fort St. James, established in 1805," The Citizen reported.
Fort George, established in 1807, would have been a likely stopping point as the letter was handed from one First Nations messenger to another on its journey from the Columbia River to Fort St. James.
The letter was finally delivered eight months and eight days from the day it was sent, Dr. JA Pearce told a meeting of the B.C. Historical Association in Victoria the previous week.
"In his address, Dr. Pearce, with the aid of lantern slides, gave a fine picture of the province's postal communication system from as far back as the early years of (the) 1800s to the present day," The Citizen reported. "He fittingly closed his talk with a comparison of the speed of postal delivery in the early days with that of 1940. It took many months for Old Country mail to reach Victoria in the early years of the last century, but through modern airmail service it was now possible to receive a London-marked letter (in Victoria) four days after posting."
I wonder how many stamps it took to get that letter delivered.
Thompson was one of the greatest explorers and cartographers in history -during his 28-year career with the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company, he traveled more than 88,500 kilometres and surveyed 4.92 million sq. km of wilderness in Canada and parts of the U.S.
Between 1810 and 1812, Thompson lead the first European expedition to travel the entire length of the Columbia River.
To explore 100 years of local history yourself, visit the Prince George Citizen archives online at: pgc.cc/PGCarchive. The Prince George Citizen online archives are maintained by the Prince George Public Library.
