Ontario Visual Heritage Project: Sarnia-Lambton

The history of the part of South-Western Ontario now known as Lambton county is unique. It's evolution was driven not by the political turmoil of Upper Canada's formative years, but by the sweeping changes of the industrial revolution and the tremendous advances in technology that came with it. The swamps made sure of that. They impeded widespread European settlement into the late 1830's - forever securing its moniker as "Canada West's last Frontier.

Lambton County is located in the middle of a vast swamp. For this reason, it was one of the last parts of Canada West to be settled in by Europeans. Many natives of the area inhabited Walpole Island (and still do, to this day). They were joined in a league by the Three Fires Confederacy, consisting of the Ojibwa, Podowadami, Ottawa tribes. These natives lived as hunter/gatherers. They also used a Clan system to distribute responsibilities throughout the community. Some groups were responsible for regulating fishing and hunting, while others dealt with medicine or acted as warriors. The first European settlers to make their homes in Lambton were the French. They became Loyalists, coming from Detroit after the War of 1812. Raymond Baby was a wealthy man, who obtained much of the land along the St. Clair River. His grandson, Francis Baby, was responsible for building the area’s first Catholic Church. Despite their industrious efforts, they had fairly good relations with the Native people of the area. There was a mutual respect between them. The Natives benefitted from the relationship, obtaining iron, steel, silk cloth, ivory combs, and steel plows.

Another attempt at a community similar to those of Robert Owen was later attempted in Lambton County: the Petworth Settlement at Warwick. However, this one did not rely on Socialism to the same extent. Settlers owned their own land and homes, but worked cooperatively as a community. Warwick was connected to the river via the Egremont Road. Lord Egremont made efforts to facilitate immigration to the New World, alleviating the economic stress facing England. He built the Egremont Road, which gave the first real access to the interior, allowing settlements, like the one at Warwick, to prosper. In 1833, a group of settlers from Petworth came to the area called “The Rapids,” now known as Sarnia. Henry Jones saw the potential in The Rapids and after the burning of Maxwell, he took up permanent residence there. Malcolm Cameron, an astute businessman, arrived in 1834. Cameron, Durand, and Vidal became the main economic force in early Sarnia. They were merchants, millers, and they fostered the ship-building trade. Cameron was involved in some decidedly unsavoury business transactions, one that involved taking land from the Native people.

In the early 1850’s, Alexander Murray travelled to the Enniskellen Swamp to find the source of some petroleum that he had acquired. He returned to his home in Woodstock, where it is likely that word of oil in the swamp spread to one Charles Tripp, a treasure hunter of sorts. Tripp went to Enniskellan Township to find oil. He discovered a gumbed and by heating a piece of it, made it into asphault, a sample of which was sent to the Paris International Expo. As a result, it is said that Louis Bonaparte ordered enough asphault to pave the streets of Paris. Tripp and carriage maker James Miller Williams later went digging for crude oil. In 1858, Williams dug the North America’s first commercial oil well. It was in 1862 at Oil Springs that “Crazy” Hugh Nixon Shaw drilled deeper than anyone before.

The town of Oil Springs experienced an enormous influx in population during the oil boom. However, it did not become a civilized city like nearby London or Hamilton. It was more akin to an old west frontier town. It was dirty, covered in oil and grease, and smelled of oil. People began coming from further and further away to cash in on the oil.John Henry Fairbank first came to Oil Springs as a surveyer in 1861. He fell in love with the area and put all his savings into drilling for oil. He is often credited with inventing the jerker line system, a more economically effiecient method of drilling. This allowed for an entire field of wells to be produced from a centrally located power source.

The Wilkes brothers of Brantford came to Sombra Township in 1850. They took advantage of the swampy forests of Lambton, purchasing 2000 acres of land and then harvesting the trees for lumber. A wave of settlers came to the new town of Wilkesport. By the 1860’s, the Wilkes brothers had exhausted the potential for lumber on their land and left the county. However, the other community members remained there, farming the open land that had once been thickly forested. Lambton County is notoriously flat and wet. It was once known as the Great Enniskellan Swamp. In fact, people didn’t bother venturing into the swamps until oil was discovered, because they had no reason to do so. The wetness acted as a barrier to agriculture, settlement, and transportation. It also led to swamp fever and malaria.

Just before the decline in Oil Springs hit, J. H. Fairbank sold his property in Oil Springs and bought up land in Petrolia. He had impeccable timing. When the boom hit Petrolia, he already had a store there. Eventually, he owned about a quarter of the businesses in the town. Richard Bradley introduced a new idea to Petrolia: that of using nitroglycerin to shake up the oil beneath the surface. After mixed success carting the nitro in from the United States, Bradley decide to build a nitroglycerin plant in Petrolia. Several more sprang up, although they eventually all exploded. Because of the explosions and fires, the town passed a law that all buildings were to be made of brick.

TSarnia’s success stems from its status as a central transportation hub. It acts as a stop-over point between Canadian and American cities. Long ago, it was a trading place for the Native people of the area. The first shipping company to prosper in Sarnia was owned by the Beatty’s. The Beatty boats played an important role in the opening up of the Canadian West. Companies were also able to send products via rail to Sarnia, where they could be transferred to boats and shipped across the Great Lakes. Ferries also took railcars across the water. It was decided that a tunnel had to be made for travel across the river. The St. Clair tunnel was approximately two storeys high and went under the St. Clair River. Because of the suction caused when steam trains were leaving the tunnel, sometimes connectors between railcars broke. This caused three substantial accidents, totalling ten deaths between them, one of which was that of a superintendent. It was clear that an electric engine had to be implemented.

Charles Southworth was a collector of fossils in the Rock Glen, Thedford, Arkona area. He was one of many amateur fossil enthusiasts in the area. The excess of fossils at Arkona, that still exists today, is a result of glacial activity. 350 million years ago, Arkona was beneath the sea. This accounts for the trilobytes and brachiopod seashells that appear there. The large round boulders found at Kettle Point have both a geological explanation and one sacred to the Nishinabi people. The Nishinabis believe that the creator placed the kettle-shaped rocks in only two places on Earth: New Zealand and Lambton County. Geologically, the rocks are called concreations. Because the oil industry began in Lambton County, it was also exhausted there first. This meant that talented men, who were the top in their fields had no purpose in Lambton. They travelled to places all across the world to use their expertise in drilling. These places included Venezuela, Trinidad, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Persia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the East Indies. Men from Lambton drilled the first well in Iran.

As early as 1875, people began to travel to Grand Bend from London and Detroit via rail and stagecoach. Enough of an effort had to be put in that people stayed in Grand Bend for weeks, sometimes months, before heading back to the dulldrum of their everyday lives. Ford picnics began to occur regulary, the only criteria being that you needed a Ford vehicle to attend. Sometimes as many as 16,000 people attended. Festivities lasted for entire weekends. The 1920’s brought the establishment of the Lakeview Casino, and many of the world’s top entertainment acts to Grand Bend. Stars like Rudy Vali, Louis Armstrong, and Guy Lombardo played there. In 1957, the Government of Canada purchased the land now known as Pinery Provincial Park, reserving it for public use. The park planners came to the park, saw the open appearance of the forest and deemed it degraded from fire and logging. They planted about three and a half million pine trees on the land. What they didn’t realize was that the local forest type was Oak Savannah, which they had effectively turned into thick pine forest.