Working men were encouraged to buy a CCM bike and save themselves the time, sore feet and worn shoe leather in a large ad in the April 26, 1924, edition of the Citizen.
But you had to go all the way to page 7 of the 10-page paper to find the news that resonates 100 years later, in the form of a letter from Charles Stewart, the federal Minister of the Interior, about the horrible cost of forest fires across Canada.
“Canada has lost in direct values along $73 million in the last five years through forest fires. Our forest fires have destroyed and still destroy more timber each year than is converted into lumber, and this despite the fact that over 90 per cent of all forest fires are directly attributable to human neglect,” the minister wrote. “Every settler, every logger, every hunter, every camper, every railway employee, every true citizen of Canada must do his part.”
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Along with a photo depicting Prince George MLA Ray Williston being sworn into the provincial cabinet as education minister was a large ad promoting the Citizen’s printing services in the April 26, 1954, edition of the Citizen.
“The Mergenthaler Model 32 Bluestreak Linotype, equipped with 12 different varieties of type to speed your operation” looks positively space age.
The best part is the Citizen’s phone number at the bottom of the ad?
67.
That’s it.
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Anybody know where Cyndi Hampson is today?
She was on the front page of the Citizen 50 years ago, when she was 16.
The front page of the April 25, 1974, edition show her with her pants rolled up, carrying her shoes and walking barefoot through a lake of water on Ferry Avenue.
Or how about postal worker Agnes Thompson, seen on the front page of the April 26, 1974, edition of the Citizen (with a jaunty Canada Post hat), accompanying a story that post office workers were back to work after a labour dispute.
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“Hearings probe drug deaths ‘epidemic,’” read the top headline of the front page of the April 25, 1994, edition of the Citizen, as provincial coroner Vince Cain made a visit to Prince George as part of his provincial inquiry into the problem.
The number of drug deaths in Prince George in 1993?
12. A cocaine overdose and 11 heroin deaths.
Dialing ahead 30 years, Prince George saw 12 drug deaths this past January alone.
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A wonderful Dave Milne photo in the April 23, 2004, edition of the Citizen showed city integrated pest management coordinator Cynthia Rebman releasing 3,000 ladybugs from the city greenhouse under the watchful eye of two-legged ladybugs Haleigh Wilson and Courtney Rose.
On page 13 of the same edition, yours truly wrote a column about his short-lived shoplifting career. He had a full head of hair, a moustache and a goatee 20 years ago.
You can find it in the Prince George Newspapers archives on the library’s website.
Neil Godbout is the former editor of the Citizen and a current member of the Prince George Heritage Commission.
