From the Archives of Western Newspapers

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Ryan Dahlman

By Samantha Johnson
For Southern Alberta Newspapers

August 7, 1884 – The Brandon Mail

Stanbo, an American forger who has been hanging around Winnipeg for some weeks, is to be extradited.

The Portage has potato beetles and the editor of the Grit paper is collecting them as a profession. He only needs to take up cockroaches and pismires (ants) and his professional training will be complete.

Dakota must be a real paradise if telegraph reports of the late storms are true. A Fargo dispatch names ten farmers who had their crops ruined with hailstones falling in some places three inches in diameter and covering the ground six inches deep.

The police court yielded a gross revenue of $274.55 in July.

August 6, 1909 – The Wainwright Star

Another attempt will be made by the finance department in Ottawa to rid Canada of the large amount of US silver in circulation. Notices have been sent to banks that a commission of three-eighths of one percent will be paid on all US silver exported. Arrangements have been made with the US treasury to receive the silver back and this should do much to rid the country of foreign coin.

A Vancouver man pawned his wooden leg to buy whiskey and was arrested for vagrancy. The smart Vancouver police could prove he had no means to support himself.

Passenger service on the G.T.P. from Edmonton to Winnipeg is scheduled to commence on August 15. Isn’t it enough to sit up and rub your eyes to think of three roads running over 800 miles west of Winnipeg already, and another bunch coming fast?

August 5, 1915 – The Alderson News

Balzac was asked to explain a passage in one of his books and admitted it didn’t mean anything. “You see,” he said, “to the average reader everything that is clear seems easy; and if I did not give them a complicated and meaningless sentence sometimes, he would think he knew as much as I do.”

The annual civic census, which was recently completed, gives Edmonton a population of 59,399 against 72,516 last year. Since the last census, nearly 5,000 men have left for the front or training camps with another 7,000 nurses and other volunteers signing up.

The heavy rains this summer have flooded out some farmers. One farmer reports of a slough overflowing the banks and the fish within are eating the heads of his wheat.