Events from 1968

The nine-storey Royal Bank Building at the corner of Victoria Street and Sixth Avenue was officially opened in March.

Concerned with the high incidence of respiratory ailments, the Northern Interior Board of health recommended to the city and regional district that caution should be exercised about attracting pollution-producing industries to the Prince George area.

An innovative system was used by the SPCA in the face of financial shortages. When the facility could no longer accept pets, the branch operated an adoption service by telephone. The SPCA accepted calls from people with animals to be adopted and provided their telephone numbers to others who called in looking for pets.

In June, the Prince George Kiwanis-Nechako club began building a replica of Fort George. As part of a first phase, the building, stockade and corner gun turrets were built to copy the original fort, all completed by November. A second phase was planned to erect buildings inside the stockade. Two thousand hours of donated labour and $18,000 worth of donated materials and equipment made the project possible.

Canadian Pacific Airlines introduced Boeing 737 service on November 20. The jet was flown in to the airport the week before and, after it made some practice runs, the public was invited to walk through and see the plane’s interior.

The water supply source for Blackwater and Blackburn residents was cut off during the first week in December. The fire department had been supplying them with tankerloads of water at $8.00 a load. However, fire chief Harold Dornbierer informed the tanker truck driver that his department would no longer supply the communities with water. He was concerned that his department might not have access to water in case of a fire. Chief Dornbierer explained, "We inherited this practice of selling water by accident years ago, when the town was small. Now it interferes with the operation of my department. When ice builds up on the tarmac outside the hall and around the hydrant so I can’t get the fire truck out of the hall, then it’s time to stop." About 100 homes were affected. They relied on trucked water because the area lacked good drinking water. In fact, one contractor had drilled 700 feet without finding water in any quantity.

At the airport, 18,000 feet of 150-foot wide runway had to be kept clear. Snow blowing equipment at the time consisted of 300-horsepower heavy-duty blowers that sent huge arching clouds of snow across the field as they worked. It was a spectacular, but familiar sight to people travelling in winter. Accumulations of seven to ten inches of snow were not unusual during most winter months.