Within two hours, an impromptu committee had been formed to organise a celebration, all businesses were closed and a procession, headed by a band, marched through town.
A combined thanksgiving service was held in the Domain later that evening.
There were speeches and singing, and a gala for the children the next day.
"VICTORY AT LAST" was the headline in the next issue of the Bay of Plenty Times, published a few days later.
Below it: "German Delegates Sign Armistice, and Hostilities cease on all Fronts."
"PEACE!" was declared at the top of that day's editorial.
Owner-editor William Henry Gifford wrote it with vigour, and the historic tone it deserved.
"Tuesday dawned on a world at peace," was his opening line.
You can imagine entire families huddled around their copy of the Bay of Plenty Times, the primary source of war news for Tauranga residents at the time.
They were reading words they had long been waiting for.
"After more than four years of war, such as the world has never before experienced, and into which has been crowded more frightfulness than the mind of man can possibly conceive, the gods of war are leashed, and a benumbed and staggering world takes pause from its orgy of slaughter."
Gifford was one of the most influential men in town.
He saw the importance of supplying locals with trustworthy news about the war and so posted regular updates on a bulletin board outside the Bay of Plenty Times newsroom.
"And he was a highly qualified professional journalist. He could take shorthand at 180 words a minute and type at 120."
- Read the full November 1918 Armistice issue of the Bay of Plenty Timeshere -
Putting the paper out each day was not easy, however.
The Bay of Plenty Times was far from a financial success and providing free updates on a bulletin board and increasing it to a daily newspaper didn't help.
The paper also struggled with staffing, steadily losing people to the war.
There were rising costs, and problems getting newsprint.
"He was basically working two other jobs to keep the business afloat," Allan says.
He says W.H. (as his grandfather was commonly known) also held down the job of town clerk for a time and worked as a Hansard reporter in Parliament when it was sitting.
Yet he never missed an issue of the Bay of Plenty Times and wrote an editorial about the war at least once a month. He penned 75 in total.
"They tended to hold a lot stronger views, shall we say, than the current ones," Allan says.
"If something got up his nose, well ... if you don't like it, you say so. It's no good just ignoring it."
By the beginning of 1917, the paper was making a loss.
It had been forced back to a tri-weekly publication in July 1916.
William Henry Gifford. Photo / Tauranga City Libraries
Despite its financial struggles, the Bay of Plenty Times continued to post free war news on the bulletin board outside. That would only stop after the ceasefire, on November 28, 1918.
The generosity of W.H. Gifford did not go unnoticed. He was thanked by the mayor and given a gift – a silver tea and coffee service.
"Because of his efforts in keeping people up with the news, he was obviously well appreciated within the community," Allan says.
His grandfather's tireless efforts to accurately record events of the day also means, 100 years on, we can look back through old clippings to see how news of the Armistice signing was received locally.
It is a window into another time, but the same place.
There is also a long column on the next page headlined "INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC".
It was that which muted the Armistice celebrations in Tauranga, on that Tuesday in November 1918.
We know that because the Bay of Plenty Times was there.
"Throughout, the peace rejoicing have been greatly sobered by the general-sickness, and the matter of arranging a more fitting celebration later on, particularly for the children, might well receive consideration," it reported.
