Langley Centennial Museum
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Object Name
Oral History
,
Recording
Object ID
SR-098
Title
Mr. and Mrs. William Crozier Blair oral history interview conducted by Peter Chant on 3 Jun. 1977.
Extent
1 audio cassette.
Date
3 Jun. 1977.
Description
SR-098: Track 1 introduces the interview.
Track 2 discusses the Culbert family, including Thomas Culbert.
Track 3 discusses the Blair family history, including George Irvine Blair. George Blair's work at Hat Creek is discussed. The Blair farm is described.
Track 4 discusses early transportation in the Langley area, including the New Westminster Bridge and the BC Electric.
Track 5 continues to discuss George Blair.
Track 6 discusses Blair's schooling.
Track 7 discusses Blair's family, including how he met his wife Mrs. Doris Blair (nee Livingston) and her family and their dairy farm.
Track 8 continues to discuss transportation, including paddlewheelers on the Fraser River.
People/Subject
Blair, George Irvine
George came to BC from the north of Ireland in 1886. He homesteaded a farm in Langley in the Coghlan area of Langley, but spent many years working in the Cariboo, running Hat Creek House and Hat Creek Ranch with his wife, Elizabeth Culbert, who he married in 1897. In 1902 George and Elizabeth returned to Langley and George purchased a farm on what is now 216th Street from his father-in-law, Thomas Culbert, and they developed a dairy farm. Culbert had purchased the farm in 1880 and the Blair family continued to own the farm until 2006. George was the father of William "Bill" Crozier Blair, later a mayor of the Township of Langley. George died in Milner on February 26, 1933 at the age of 69.
Blair, William Thomas Crozier
William Thomas Crozier Blair (Bill) was born on 5 May, 1913 in Langley, to George Irvine and Elizabeth Blair, nee Culbert. He attended school in Milner, and at Langley High School. Bill took over part management of the family farm (on 216th Street, across from the airport) when his father died in 1933. He married Doris Livingston, whom he met through his sister, as they both attended Columbian College in New Westminster. They had six children: Jean, Doug, Jim, John, Terry, and Gordie. He was a director of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture, Director of the Mainland Dairymen's Association, Vice-president of the Artificial Insemination Centre, and a member of the B.C. Branch of the Holstein-Friesian Association. He served for 4 years as the Regional Board Director of the Central Fraser Valley Regional District. Blair served 19 years as a member of the Langley Municipal Council, between 1962 and 1981. In 1981 he became the Township's mayor, a position he held until his death March 28, 1985, at the age of 71, after a surgery to treat a perforated intestine. The W. C. Blair Recreation Centre in Murrayville was named for him.
William Blair gave an interview to the museum in 1976. His interview can be found at SR-015.
British Columbia Electric Railway Company Ltd. (BCER)
The British Columbia Electric Railway's interurban passenger service for the Fraser Valley, B.C., area came through Langley in 1910. The company was building rail lines into Langley as early as 1906, when they signed an agreement with Langley government. The company itself began as a merger of the National Electric Tramway and Lighting Company (Victoria), Vancouver Electric Railway and Light Company Ltd., and Vancouver & Westminster Tramway Company, and was responsible for hydroelectric power generation, power transmission, and electric rail lines on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. All three companies had gone into receivership in 1895, and the BCER was met with receivership in 1896, following the Point Ellice Bridge Disaster in Victoria. The company was only able to survive through assistance from London financers, and began operations in 1897 as an English-owned company. A station built at 240 St. in the general area formerly known as Harmsworth in Langley was named after Rochfort Henry Sperling, general manager of the B.C. Electric Company, and the area subsequently came to be known as Sperling community. In 1910, a substation was built at Coghlan, and still stands (2021). The substation stepped the voltage from the power transmission lines down for use by the trains passing through. It did not provide power to the surrounding community. Interurban passenger services on the B.C.E.R's Fraser Valley Line ceased in 1950. The company ended all service in 1958, and broke up into the branches it is modernly: BC Hydro, Translink, and BC Transit.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_Electric_Railway
Culbert, Thomas
Thomas was born in Ireland in about 1844. In 1880, he and his wife Ellen and children came to Langley after a few years spent in Ontario. They purchased the Benjamin Boake homestead. Wife Ellen died in 1894, and sometime shortly after 1902 (when son-in-law George Blair bought his farm) Thomas moved to New Zealand and never returned.
Term Source: HPC Record (HPC-437/1193)
paddle steamer (see boats)
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