The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PAOK TEN--NINTH SECTION = THE FEEE PRESS. LONDON, ONTARIO, SATURDAY, JUNE .11, 1949 = of Lambton Lambton's Fertile Soil Sought by Immigrants By Glen Hancock THREE YEARS AFTER THE LONDON FREE PRESS printed its first newspaper, the joint constituency of Lambton-Kent counties gave George Brown his first seat in the Government of Upper Canada. George Brown was a Liberal and a reformer. He had been unsuccessful in his previous constituency of Oxford, and he was more interested in Canada as a whole than in the counties he represented. But the people of Lambton County, particularly, took great satisfaction from the privilege of sending this editor and politician to York, where he was later to be named a "father of Confederation." Yet George Brown was only a •mall item In the history of the County of Lambton. Surveyed in 1832 The first surveying of the county was done in Euphemia Township in 1822. Samuel Smith was the surveying contractor, »nd the first settler was an ex-teamster in the revolutionary army named David Fauchcer, who settled his large family in the southeast portion of Lamb-ton County. The land there was better and well drained than the remainder of the territory later to be developed. Generally speaking, however, the entire county is exceptionally fertile and favorable for the growing of fruit and vegetables. Its pleasant landscape and its communication and transportation facilities along the banks of the St. Clair River and Lake Huron were early enticements for immigrants seeking good land in which to plant the seeds of settlement. Lambton County takes its name from one of the great personalities of Canadian history. John George Lambton, or the Earl of Durham, was no ordinary man. He was no Canadian, and had no desire to be one. Yet in the one year during which he remained as Governor-General of Canada he did more than any contemporary to crystallize the constitution of the colony he was detailed to investigate. It Was the desire of the people of Malcolm Cameron, who founded Sarnia in 1834, when he purchased 200 acres on the shore of the St. Clair River and laid it out in town lots. Cameron lived in Sarnia until 1863, and at one time shipped tremendous quantities of lumber to England. Lambton that their county should be named after him. Absentee Owners The county of 1,000 square miles, which is now crossed from east to west by three railways, was held largely during the first years of the 19th century by absentee landlords who retarded development of the best lands. The first settlers after Euphemia Congratulations London Free Press . and best wishes ! 1 0 a newspaper now a century old, greetings from one of the oldest wholesalers and exporters of leather and rubber footwear in Canada, LONDON SHOE CO LIMITED 389 CLARENCE ST. METCALF 391 View of the London branch office with showrooms and service department at. 9t Dundas Street - - - serving the Counties of Middlesex, Huron, Oxford, Elgin and Norfolk. NATIONAL CASH REGISTERS Accounting and Bookkeeping Machines Adding Machines Staff of 15 men. of which eight are factory-trained service men, to provide the best possible service on all National Equipment. * Many successful self-serve food stores have been designed FEEE by our salesmen who are trained in this type of work. NATIONAL CASH REGISTER CO. OF CANADA, LIMITED 91 Dundas Street London Fair, 5660 Filled with sailing vessels and paddle-wheel steamers, the port of Sarnia was, as it is today, a busy place during the last century. In the early days of the port, thousands of feet of lumber were shipped. Later, when oil was discovered, it was also shipped out. On the right can be seen a grain elevator, another product loaded at Sarnia, went to Enniskillen and Brooke townships, and in the Township of Dawn a Virginian settled a colony of freed slaves. In Moore and Sombra townships, lots were sold for five and 10 shillings an acre, and all during the opening up of the interior the Lambton Indians, chiefly Chippewas and Ojibways, kept to the reserves in Sarnia and Bosanquet townships. But they did not take favorably to the culture of the soil anymore than the generations which had preceded them. The natural resources, the proximity to the water, and tHe traditions of the settlers decided the places to be settled. Name Given Sarnia, the county seat of Lambton, was laid out in the "Thirties." Sir John Colborne gave the place its name ' after the rapids had prevented him from going on to Lake Huron. The location probably reminded him of the Roman name for the Isle of Guernsey and called the port "Sarnia." A Huguenot descendant, Richard Emeric Vidal, was one of the first settlers of Sarnia. He was a sea captain and retired to Canada to farm. During his first winter he froze both his hands, returned later to England, and finally came back to Sarnia as first collector of customs. Arkona was settled by Asa Townsend in 1821 for the purpose of developing salt deposits. By 1871, the town had 1,000 people, and was considered one of the most promising villages within a 40-mile radius of London. The population today is static at 400, with only a cheese factory remaining of its once numerous industries. Early Settlements The community of North Moore was established by Andrew Allingham in 1837 for agriculture reasons. Sometime later, Port Franks was settled as a centre of the lumber shipping business, from the area via the Aux Sables River and Lake Huron. In 1832 the Egremont road was cut through from London to Sarnia at the cost of $2,000,000, and a stage coach service was started. This gave impetus to the development of the bordering land, and sometime after 1858 the Village of Watford was founded. From this place was to come Dr. McLeavy, who built the first telephone, electric and water works system there; George Brett, lieut. governor of Alberta, Dr. Basil Harvey, who became dean of medicine at Chicago University, and Franklin McLeay, Shakespearian actor. Oil Proved Boon Wyoming Village grew up around the oil wells discovered in the early "Sixties" in Enniskillen Township. Wyoming was the closest point from which the produce of the Oil Springs fields could be shipped by rail. Prior to 1849 Brigden was developed as a barter centre, but the settlement has not been kindly treated by the turn of events leading to 1949. Petrolia, on the Sydenham River, still has petroleum as its stable industry. Named in 1867 by the first postmaster, Patrick Barclay, it is in the centre of a farming district, where brick clay is also found. Fate played cruel tricks with some of Lambton's early people. Many sites which had been chosen as centres of commerce became ghost communities with the vicissitudes of time, the diversion of streams and the building of railroads. The latter often by-passed established villages, and caused new ones to be opened up. Plympton Township suffered serious retrogression when transportation for potash was broken, and other well started settlements gave way for the creation of new ones. Lambton County is now fairly well populated, but there is still room on the arable land for more farmers. Most of the population live in towns and villages, but in recent years the character of rural life has rapidly overtaken the high standard of living in the municipalities. There are schools, post offices , and churches within easy reach of most farms, and natural gas, electrification, telephones, and other conveniences have lessened the labors of Lambton County folk. Sarnia's Wave of Prosperity Based on Oil in Lambton By Leon Turner LIKE A CHIP FLOATING on a rising sea, the St. Clair River city of Sarnia has ridden to its present position as the chemical centre of the nation atop a single ever mounting wave -- a wave that started as a ripple when oil was struck at Petrolia and Oil Springs more than 90 years ago. The wave grew and grew as the importance of oil grew, until the city finally became the site of the greatest refinery in the Dominion, with direct pipe line connections to the giant midcontinent fields of the United States. For a long time it seemed that Saruia would never be anything but a refinery city, but then came added impetus in the shape of a crying need for rubber during the Second World War. |f || Sarnia, as the oil capital of the East and possessor of direct rail and water connections with key : cities of the United States and Canada, was chosen as the home of Polymer .Corporation, the only synthetic rubber plant in the iPUl British Empire. Polymer did its war job" in f equipping allied armies with rub- £; ber, but it did more. It opened L; up a vast new field of petroleum derived chemicals and plastics. New industries sprang up like mushrooms to take advantage of the raw materials never before available in Canada. New Chemical Capital And today Sarnia is riding higher than ever before, and has become known far and wide as the new chemical capital of Canada. Its population has increased so that it is virtually bursting at the seams. Twenty-seven thousand people live in the city, and thousands of others, unable to find living space have turned the suburban portions of Sarnia Township into an extension of the city itself. But Sarnia was a thriving town even before the oil wave began in 1860. Its initial claim to fame was as a lumber port. Founded in 1836, the town and its encircling forests provided in a single year, one-sixth of all the oak timber exported by Canada to Great Britain. Visited Tribes Until 1672, the great forests of the St. Clair country were exclusively the property of Indian bands. Then came -Father Dail-lon, a French priest who stopped off near the present site of the city and visited the Indian tribes. Forty-two years later Father Joliet pa.ssed through the St. John Alexander Mackenzie, who settled in Sarnia in 1847, and who became prime minister of Canada from 1873 to 1879. He was born in Perthshire, Scotland, and died in Toronto in 1892. He is buried at Sarnia. Clair on his way to the upper lakes. All these years, the river had been nameless to the white man, but in 1770, Father Henni-pen gave it the name which has remained through the years. Still the area was under the flag of France. A stronghold named Fort St. Joseph was built by the French pioneers at the 1 point where the river joined Lake Huron, and although it has been dust for centuries, it was the centre of the first settlement in the area of the present city. Built Pioneer Home The first settler to actually take up residence within the present MAGUIRE MOTORS -----is proud of its 25 years of service to the motoring public of Western Ontario. We Congratulate The London Free Press on its TOO years of service to the public of Western Ontario, • Distributors for CHEVROLET and OLDS-MOBILE - - CHEVROLET and MAPLE LEAF Trucks. Maguire Motors Ltd. "The Home of Top-Flight Service" Fullarton Street Opp. Post Office limits of the city was a French-Canadian named - La Forge, who cleared a plot of land and built a home where the post office now stands, a stone's throw from the river. La Forge's homestead, and those later built by his sons, were separated by two miles of bush wilderness and treacherous swamps from the stronghold of Fort St. Joseph, but the land near the lake was too sandy for good farming, so it was inland the farmers went. It was not until 1832 that English settlers came upon the little beauty spot nestling at the foot of Lake Huron. Captain Richard Emeric Vidal, a retired naval officer, arrived in the "red jacket," looked over tne land and liked what he saw. He took out a 200 acre grant and sailed for home to return with his family two years later. Started Village At about the same time, two other men, George Durand and Malcolm Cameron, settled in the area and shared with Vidal the work that started Sarnia on the path to greatness. Durand opened the settlement's first sawmill, and Cameron began the formation of the new village of Sarnia by subdividing a 200-acre grant into town lots. The name Sarnia was not applied to the new village until 1836, at a council meeting, the name was officially changed from "The Rapids" to Port Sarnia, There was a strong effort on the part of the Scots settlers to name the village New Glasgow. This faction did succeed in naming Front street Trongate street, but the name failed to stick, and Front street has been Front street ever since. 44 Taxpayers At this time in the history of Sarnia, there were 44 taxpayers • in the village, nine frame houses, four log houses, two brick dwellings, two taverns and three stores. There was but one carriage. In 1840, the first mail service was instituted between Sarnia and London. Up until that time, the natives had secured their long delayed mail by Indian runner from Chatham or from Port Huron, then known as Desmond, The swampy way between London and Sarnia was conquered in 1840 when a stage route along the present London road was opened to mark an epoch only rivaled in later years by the opening of the railway. Scow First Us«d Until 1863, the only way to Port Huron was by canoe or boat. In that year, a crude ferry service was inaugurated--a large scow, driven by horse power. This gave way to the "Sarnia," a big side wheel steamer which landed at the foot of Butler street--a street with a reputation in those days. By 1851 the Village of Sarnia had grown to a population of 800. Oil Discovered Then in 1860 the wave started. Oil was struck in Enniskillen, and later in the Petrolia area. From afar, men came to garner the black treasure, and a new industry sprang into being almost overnight. At first Sarnia was little affected by the development and turned jealous eyes on the communities which were being lifted to prosperity and prestige on the rising tide of oil. Small refineries were built in the Petrolia and Wyoming areas, and bigger ones sprang up at London and Hamilton. There were a couple of small plants at Sarnia, but the natural flow of crude was not then in the direction of that community and it did not seem destined to benefit much by the development of the oil fields. Consolidated Assets Eventually, however, faced with increasing competition from the United States in Canadian markets, many of the little refineries closed down, and in 1880, seven of the remaining companies in Petrolia and London consolidated their assets and formed the Imperial Oil Company with a main refinery in Petrolia. Transportation, however, was a major problem, and since Sarnia was ideally provided with both rail and water facilities, and was within pipe line distance of the Petrolia fields, the company in 1898 increased its capital to permit the purchase of property at Sarnia. A small refinery operated by the Bushnell Oil Company, was acquired, and formed the nucleus of the mammoth plant now operating. The refinery at Petrolia was dismantled, and the parts moved and set up again in Sarnia. Oil Imported In the meantime, demand for petroleum products was increasing by leaps and bounds, and the Petrolia wells were entirely unable to keep pace with demands. In 1904, therefore, Imperial began the importation of crude oil from Ohio to augment the domestic supply. Up to the present day, however, the refinery continues to purchase all available crude oil produced in the Petrolia and other near-by fields. Stepping backwards to pick up another important thread in the story, we come to one of the greatest events in the history of the city, the coming of the railroad in 1859. The old main line running from St. Marys to Point Edward with one train a day was the last thing in transportation at that time. Continued increase in business, both freight and passenger, forced the beginning in 1888 of the famous St. Clair tunnel under the river to Port Huron. Regarded throughout the world as one of the greatest engineering feats of the day, the tunnel was completed in 1891. Bridge Vital Link The second great international link between Sarnia and Port Huron, the famous Blue Water Bridge with a span from shore to shore of 871 feet, and an overall length of 6,392 feet, was completed in 1938 at a cost of $3,614,000. With the coming of the bridgt, Sarnia became the gateway to Canada's tourist wonderland tot millions of vacationing Americans. Last summer, almost 3,500,« 000 vehicles entered Canada across the big bridge, and a new record is expected this year. Sarnia merchants value the American tourist trade at $6,000,000 per . year. The latest chapter in Sarnia'* history has come with the tremendous chemical expansion brought about by the war-born Polymer Corporation. Lured by the diverse petroleum chemicals produced by Polymer and by th* vast salt deposits underlying th* area, Dow Chemical of Canads Limited has embarked on a $40,-000,000 plant building project, and already has completed nearly half of this., Refinery Planned Fibreglas of Canada has built here and is contemplating expansion. Sun Oil Company ha* bought property south of th« city and is understood to bt planning, a new $20,000,000 refinery for the site. Last winter a new chapter wa» written into an already glorious sports history of the city when the new $250,000 Memorial Arena, financed entirely by public subscription, was opened to the public. • Projected for the near future are a new Bell Telephone exchange, now being constructed, which will bring dial telephones to the city by next year; and the hydro cycle changeover, scheduled to swing the city to 60-cyele power this fall. We Are Proud of Our Record in London • * • During our eleven Hears of business in London we have applied over 2,700 complete new roofs. BUILT-UP ROOFS 9 INSULATED SIDINGS • INSULATION Quality, Dependable Workmanship is your Guarantee of Satisfaction. ESTIMATES FREE ON ANY KIND OF CONSTRUCTION Distributors For BRANTFORD AND TORONTO ASPHALT PRODUCTS F. E. DAYUS COMPANY 147 WHARNCLIFFE RD. S, -- LONDON, ONT. TELEPHONE FAIRMONT 3063 Graham & Graham Specialists in All Types of Excavation for Towns, Counties, Townships in All Parts of Ontario EQUIPMENT FOR RENT POWER SHOVELS BULLDOZERS . CONCRETE MIXERS DUMP TRUCKS PORTABLE ARC WELDER SEWER PUMPS 30-TON EQUIPMENT TRAILER AIR COMPRESSORS WITH PAVEMENT BREAKERS WHARNCLIFFE RD. S. METCALF 6777