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Joe Gibson started his business ventures in the 1920s. His first was an electrical supply shop that he opened in the Theatre Block in 1922. By 1925 Joe was involved in real estate, and in 1926 he expanded the electrical shop to include hardware. In 1931 he sold the store, but built a new building supply store in 1932 that was run by his son Colin until his death in 1933, when the store was closed. In 1937 Gibson added insurance to the services he offered at his location on the corner of Glover Road and Fraser Highway (then Yale Road). At this point, Gibson reopened the Langley Theatre and his wife Olive ran it until 1944. In 1938 the Gibsons entered the auction business, running the weekly Thursday auctions that became an important part of Langley's routine. It turned out to be the most successful of all of his enterprises. Gibson sold the real estate business to Len Goble in 1945. Gibsons son Mickey Bladen Gibson ran and owned the Gibson's Auctions after his father retired in 1958. The site was rebuilt as The Auction Centre in the 1970s and later the building housed Fraser Valley Auctions.

The paper was originally entitled the Langley Advance, and was first published July 23, 1931.The paper was started by Ernest J. Cox, who had moved to BC from North Battleford, Saskatchewan to take a half interest in the Abbotsford News along with Gerald Heller. At the same time, the Langley Board of Trade had been negotiating with Heller to start a paper in Langley: Cox took up the task. A few months after the Advance was founded, Cox and Heller went their separate ways, and Cox retained the Langley paper and Heller kept the Abbotsford paper. Cox ran the paper with the help of his wife and two teenaged children. After the war, son Fred Cox returned to the paper along with George Johnson (an RAF instructor) who had married daughter, Kathleen Cox. In 1947 Jim Schatz joined the paper. In 1949 The Langley Advance Publishing Co. Ltd. was formed with principals E.J. and Fred Cox, Johnson, and Schatz. E.J. Cox went into semi-retirement in 1958, and Fred Cox sold his interests in the paper, but took controlling interest of the commercial printing portion of the business. Schatz served as publisher and editor, and was well known in the BC newspaper industry. In 1981 Bob Groeneveld became editor, and remains editor today (2005).
Term Source: Paper Trails: a history of British Columbia and Yukon Community Newspapers, 1999 (by George Allan Afflek).