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Cap News Throwback Thursday: 1968

After 86 years of service, we wanted to utilize our amazing treasure trove of Âé¶čAV history and share it with you.
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Over the last 86 years the Âé¶čAV has served the Central Okanagan – and over the last 86 years it has printed a whole lot of papers.

A conservative estimate puts it at about 8,000 editions.

The new Black Press Okanagan digital team, based right here in Âé¶čAV, wanted to utilize this amazing treasure trove of pieces of our history and share it with you.

Each Thursday we will present Cap News Throwback Thursday for a fun little peak into the past, and a chance for the digital team to climb through the records room.

Today we present the Âé¶čAV edition— Wednesday March 27, 1968.

The Âé¶čAV drive-in theatre was bustling with double features, Sing’s Cafe was offering an all-you-can-eat Chinese Smorgasbord for just $2.25 and the mayor of Vernon came to Âé¶čAV to apologize.

Vernon Mayor William Halina and Alderman Allan Hassell made a trip down to the Âé¶čAV City Hall to offer an apology for “what they termed a breach of protocol”.

“It seems Mayor Halina failed to show up at the civic luncheon held during Brier Week although he had been invited and had indicated he would be in attendance,” reads the article.

What bad manners!

“The Vernon Mayor offered his humble apology to Acting Mayor Ernie Winter who accepted it in good grade and seized the opportunity to praise the spirit of cooperation shown by the Valley cities in matters of importance.”

Further south, the Lions Club of the Okanagan was celebrating the new “Friendship Arch” placed at the 49th parallel near the Osoyoos customs area.

“What a better world it would be if more and more service clubs would join together as the Lions’ Clubs in District 19 have done,” said Bob McDougall in 1968, representing the State Governor of Washington at the ceremony.

“If we could also extend this to lands behind the Iron Curtain then mankind would embark on a new era indeed.”

The Iron Curtain refers to a boundary that divided Europe into two areas after the end of the Second World War.

A political, military, and ideological barrier, the Iron Curtain was erected by the Soviet Union to seal off itself and its eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other non-communist areas.

It was fully dropped at the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor graced the Âé¶čAV big screen as the Paramount theatre showed The Taming of the Shrew. The movie received two Academy Award nominations, but did not take home an Oscar.

With tax season upon us, it may hurt to read a full tax return was just $5.00 in 1968. In 2017 dollars, that is about $35, notably less than what a tax return will cost you today.

Fun fact: American playwright Tennessee Williams was born on March 27, many years earlier of course, in 1911. Of his many accomplishments he wrote two Pulitzer Prize winning plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .

A Streetcar Named Desire got some 2017 attention this week as one Wheel of Fortune contestant seems to have missed that lesson in class. Check out the video below.

You can also check out our previous throwbacks here: , , , , ,, , and

The Cap News is now owned by Black Press Community Media. Founded in 1975, BlackPress now publishes more than 170 titles in British Columbia, Alberta, Washingtonstate, Hawaii, Ohio and California.

Do you have an important date or piece of history you hope we can find in ourhistorical editions?! Let us know at okanagan@bpdigital.ca.

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