Looking back article from October 2017.

*This image features a group of women sitting in the garden c. 1950s.

It is 1951, and on July 10th Canada will sign an official peace document with Germany while at war on a new front in Korea. Labatt Blue is introduced and suffragette Nellie McClung passes away. In Pitt Meadows the Lions Club forms and a steel bridge is constructed over the Alouette at Harris Road. The following year WAC Bennett begins his 20-year reign as premier of BC, and Lester Pearson becomes president of the U.N. General Assembly and, in 1956, resolves the Suez Crisis, garnering him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.  At home, March 1957 marks the opening of the first two lane bridge over the Pitt, and the community has also gained a new church hall, a new volunteer fire department, a reactivated Pitt Meadows Day, a strong blueberry industry and Blueberry Co-Op, a new multi-room school (PM Elementary),and a growing population of Dutch citizens in the Pitt Polder area.  In Canada the last two years of the decade bring the birth and death of the Avro Arrow, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the second Monday in October as our official Thanksgiving, the collapse of the Second Narrows crossing, and the creation of the National Energy Board.  Life is slower in Pitt Meadows as Edith McDermott retires as principal at Pitt Meadows Elementary, a new federal post office opens, and plans being made for land acquisition for an airport.

1960 dawns in Canada with a new Canadian Bill of Rights and the discovery of a Viking settlement in Newfoundland – L’Anse aux Meadows.  Here in Pitt Meadows we get two new schools – Meadowland Elementary and Pitt Meadows Secondary.  The early years of this decade bring us a new NDP party (from the ashes of the CCF),a Pearson Liberal minority government and the founding of a new B.C. university – SFU.  In 1964 the west coast experiences tsunamis after the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska and the following year Air Canada is born.  One of the most significant events of this decade is the raising of a new flag – the Maple Leaf – on National Flag Day on February 15th.  The other stand out event was Canada’s 100th birthday with celebrations at Expo 67 in Montreal.  The last years of the decade bring us Pierre Elliot Trudeau as the new leader of the federal Liberal party and, on July 1st, the official beginning of Medicare.  Back in Pitt Meadows, our airport opens in 1963, a shops wing is added to Pitt Meadows Secondary, the Lions fund a cinder track at the school, the PMAA hands responsibility for Harris Road Park over to the municipality, and our longest serving Reeve, Harold Sutton, retires in 1965.  The Canadian Centennial is celebrated well in our town with the main legacy being our history book – The Historical Story of Pitt Meadows – by Edith McDermott and published posthumously after her death in a traffic accident.

With the dawn of the 1970’s we are in a new Canada that is moving quickly towards the metric system.  In the first year of this decade the federal voting age is lowered to 18 from 21, and acts of terrorism in Quebec lead to the War Measures Act being imposed on October 16th.  Trudeau’s “Fuddle Duddle” becomes a term in 1971 and the census pegs our population at 21,568,311.  The following year, Heritage Canada is established and Davey Barrett leads his NDP party to power in BC.  The following three years bring us Lotto Canada, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the first female officers in the RCMP, and a report the recommends the decriminalization of marijuana.  Back in Pitt Meadows our population is 2,700 in 1970 and rises to 4,700 by 1975.  We have a new municipal hall further south on Harris Road and a library opens in a small house on the same site sharing the building with Pete the Barber.  One highlight of the decade is our new crest, designed by Norm Shearing.  The community also takes on a motto – Prosperity through Endeavor.  As we leave 1975 behind, plans are going into place for a second crossing of the Pitt River.

Leslie Norman, Curator at the Pitt Meadows Museum