La Cañada History: Activists protest Palm Crest PTA circus fundraiser
Ten Years Ago
The “Lilac Ladies” at Descanso Gardens, aka volunteers Joyce Kjarsgaard and Bonnie Compeau were featured in a story detailing the more than 10 years they’d tended to the 400 plants (250 varieties) comprising Descanso’s Lilac Grove. Both women said they were drawn to work with the lilac collection in their retirement because the plants reminded them of their childhood homes in Pennsylvania and Iowa, respectively.
Twenty Years Ago
While an estimated 1,200 Palm Crest Elementary School students and their families were applauding a Culpepper Merriweather Circus on their campus during the school’s annual fundraiser, about 20 animal rights activists stood outside protesting the event, holding a banner that read “Circus Animals are Enslaved Just for Entertainment; It’s Not Right.”
Thirty Years Ago
City planning staff surveyed area properties with a long view toward encouraging future development of residential townhomes for La Cañada senior citizens hoping to sell their larger homes and move to smaller, more manageable properties.
Forty Years Ago
With organizers borrowing the idea from a popular television series of the day, “Fantasy Island Casino” was announced as the theme for the St. Francis High School fundraiser aimed at adult supporters of the La Cañada private school.
Fifty Years Ago
On an April day almost seven years before the town of La Cañada and the Pasadena area known as Flintridge incorporated as one city, Flintridge resident Tim Madden of Inverness Drive made an appeal to the local chamber of commerce to throw its efforts behind bringing sewers to the community. “We have to take an active stand on our local environment or it will get away from us,” Madden told the chamber’s board of directors. (To this day, Flintridge does not have sewers.)
Sixty Years Ago
A Los Angeles man was trying to gain approval from the county to open a trampoline center in La Cañada on a Foothill Boulevard parcel between Oakwood Avenue and Rinetti Lane.
Compiled from the Valley Sun archives.
