This week in Prince George history, Sept. 4-10:
Sept. 8, 1955: Mayor Gordon Bryant ordered the police to clear out the city's "hobo jungle" after a girl was kidnapped and assaulted at a city park, The Citizen reported.
"An 11-year-old city school girl is recovering from shock at her home here today after she was bound, gagged, blindfolded and criminally assaulted by an unidentified man while walking to school yesterday (Sept. 7, 1955)," The Citizen reported. "The premeditated attack took place in the dense bush on top of Connaught Hill Park."
Police said the girl was walking back to school after lunch, at around 1 p.m., when "somewhere near the top of the steps leading up the north slope of Connaught Hill was grabbed, thrown to the ground, tied, gagged and blindfolded with sections of a bath towel" before being assaulted. After the attack, the man led her a short distance away and threatened to hurt her again if she screamed.
The man, described as between 20 and 30 with dark hair and dark complexion, left her in the bushes and told her to stay where she was until he whistled.
"After a few terrifying seconds the man whistled from some distance away and the girl ran for school," The Citizen reported. "Connaught Hill school principal Phil McGregor was just leaving the building when he saw the youngster run from the underbrush adjacent to Seventeenth Avenue. Meaning to scold her for being late and coming through the bush, which is out of bounds for children on their way to school, he went over to her found her crying violently and in a state of shock. She told him what had happened and he immediately ran to the office where he telephoned police."
A cordon of 40 police, firefighters, school teachers and city hall employees encircled the hill within minutes, and all available police officers were assigned to combing the brush on the hill.
"Her father reported (the girl's) condition as improving this morning and said he did not think the attack would produce a lasting effect," The Citizen reported.
However, the father said he intended to have his lawyer write city council demanding the city clear out the underbrush at Connaught Hill Park to improve safety for children using the paths.
"If they can't walk over the paths through the park, then they must walk the streets and be exposed to another kind of danger," the father told The Citizen.
Principal McGregor said he made the park out of bounds for children at the school several years earlier, after several children reported being chased by men while walking through it. The year before, a teacher at the school had been assaulted while walking through the park after dark, he added.
School authorities took steps to have streetlights placed in the area around the school, and Mayor Bryant promised "an immediate crackdown on the type of alcoholic, transient ne're-do-wells who frequent some parks of the city" and "work to remove the danger posed by the impenetrable park wilderness."
Bryant called on the RCMP to clear the homeless people from the city's parks and surrounding area, and lay charges of vagrancy where charges were warranted. Police had questioned several people in connection with the case, but no charges were laid as of The Citizen's press time on Sept. 8, 1955.
Unfortunately, the man responsible for this horrible attack apparently was never arrested. However, the attack did have far-reaching consequences, including a police crackdown on homeless people in the city and the redevelopment of Connaught Hill Park into the form seen today.
For the details, keep reading:
In a statement at city hall on Sept. 12, 1955 Mayor Gordon Bryant said Prince George's "province-wide reputation as a Mecca for indigents and the fringe of the criminal element" was a result of the leniency of the city's courts.
"I am going to do everything in my power to get Prince George out of the category, which apparently it shares with Kamloops and Vancouver," Bryant said. "These people, in their own world, know that the penalties here are light and the situation offers a more advantageous risk."
Bryant estimated that half the city's policing costs are attributed to the "transient vagrant category of criminality."
Bryant called on local magistrate P.J. Moran to apply the maximum legal penalties to the more than two-dozen people arrested on vagrancy and public intoxication charges in an RCMP crackdown following the attack at Connaught Hill Park, The Citizen reported.
However, Justice Moran - a veteran judge who had been the city's magistrate since 1925 - didn't cave to the pressure from the mayor and continued to issue standard sentences when the first of the cases came before him.
"Vagrants and drunks were still being fined $10 or $25 and costs, or sentenced to 10 to 20 days in jail when court convened last Saturday (Sept. 10, 1955)," The Citizen reported. "One man, who was remanded for sentence, admitted 28 previous convictions for vagrancy and said he had not held a steady job for the past five years. Another man, convicted of his fourth offence against the Government Liquor Act, was sentenced to 23 days in jail. The conviction carried a possible maximum penalty of three months in jail."
A few days later a team of volunteers began clearing the underbrush at Connaught Hill Park, lead by city parks supervisor Charles Freeman.
"A score of indignant parents converged on the hill with axes last night (Sept. 14, 1955) to begin the job of slashing away the thick brush," The Citizen reported. "With the assistance of a city tractor which cut a 15-foot trail over the hill, volunteers succeeded in clearing an area in the vicinity of Oak Street. The work crews are concentrating on clearing 100 feet of underbrush on either side of the trail leading from the north face of the hill. Eventually all underbrush in the park area will be cleared."
Another team of Connaught Hill school PTA members, along with members of several local softball and baseball teams were expected to continue the work, with the support of city council and Mayor Bryant.
By Sept. 22, 1955 parks supervisor Freeman told The Citizen that the work to clear the park had slowed down due to a lack of volunteers. The work to clear a 50-foot strip on each side of the trail was about half done at that point.
On Sept. 25, 1955, Mayor Bryant approved a city crew to finish the job of clearing the park, which had officially opened only four years earlier.
Today the City of Prince George bills Connaught Hill Park as "A place of tranquility in the midst of the city," on its website. It's a lovely place to enjoy the thousands of flowers planted every year by the city.
But now you know the tragic events that led to the creation of this idyllic viewing spot.
To explore 100 years of local history yourself, visit the Prince George Citizen archives online at: pgc.cc/PGCarchive. The Prince George Citizen online archives are maintained by the Prince George Public Library.
