Friday, November 25, 2011

Hands up Burnaby City Councillors, who was Warner Loat?

I guess the easy way to explain this Topic is by starting with a photo from the Province, January 9th, 1939, by way of the Vancouver Public Library Newspaper clippings department.




Warner Loat, according to the internet, was a Alderman for Vancouver and an Alderman for Burnaby.  He led a distinguished civic and business career and the City of Burnaby has created a permanent memorial on his behalf.

A provision in Mr. Loat's will specifies that his garden show place north of Burnaby Lake be turned over to the municipality.  The rustic cottage which is on the property will be maintained in perpetuity for the use of old council colleagues whom he often entertained there.  The property will be known as Loat Memorial Park.

Mr. Loat, who was one of the leading members in horticultural circles in the city, took great pride in his Burnaby place, and had often mentioned his intention of turning it over to the municipality

What I've found on the Internet, is that City Hall has designated a portion of the Loat property as an Off-Leash (Dog) Enclosure (Warner Loat Park) and another part is called Camp Madawaska.

Here's two pages from a Four Page document spelling out Burnaby's part of the bargain:













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But there's are document on the Internet that includes Warner Loat's name, and in one it says this:
"It is Government policy now that basically all electric power and energy that supplies the Public should be under Public auspices" - W.A.C Bennett August 1961.   

The quote comes from this thesis:
  Just type "Loat" within the document and you'll end up on page 38

Class conflict and political factionalism : a history of Local 213 of the

 The quote from W.A.C. Bennett is on page 41


But really, the whole of the document..... or at least the up to page 42, deals with the History of BC Hydro (and BC Telephone) and all of the surrounding intrigue to go along with them until 1961.

The real nuts and bolts on researching on the internet, on any topic starts here on page 280 of the document because if you think THIS document ("Class conflict and political....") is OLD hat, the last section of any document is where you find out if the Butler really did it or not.... just kidding.  What you find is the books and documents that were used to write the thesis before this one, and they're really OLD, and concise.

Its a gold mine of Key Words because you can go to your local library, or the VPL, and rummage around for books that haven't seen the light of day since .... ten year after they were written.

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