In the days of Port Sarnia every home had a gun

Phil Egan

Looking back through time, we know one thing for certain about Richard Glynn.

He could run.

During our Port Sarnia days, Glynn was a volunteer firefighter. This was a time before horse-drawn fire engines and ladder trucks. The firemen had to run with their equipment to the scene of a fire.

Glynn was better known, however, for his iconic gun shop in Trongate Street, as Front Street was known then. Glynn had opened his shop on the southwest corner of Front and George streets in 1859.

This was a time when every home in Sarnia had a gun, and every man and boy knew how to use one, both for hunting and for sport. In those days migrating wild pigeons would fill the skies in such numbers that even a poorly aimed shot into the heavens would bring at least one down. There were so many that their flight was said to have sounded like rumbling thunder.

Roasted or stewed pigeon was a common and popular meal for Sarnians, together with partridge, quail, wild turkey, duck and geese.

There was said to be no better marksman in town than Richard Glynn, who was also an expert rifle-maker and locksmith. So recognized was his knowledge of weaponry that he was often called as an expert witness in criminal trials. When King Edward VII visited Canada and the U.S. as Prince of Wales in 1860, Richard Glynn received a commission from the city of London to manufacture a rifle to be presented to the royal visitor.

Glynn also did a lot of business with the Hudson Bay Company, converting flintlock rifles to cap action weapons that were, in turn, traded to indigenous people for furs. Natives found the flintlock rifles cumbersome to operate.

In 1878, Glynn moved his gun shop to a new brick structure at 216 North Front Street. When he died in 1926, the long-established business was taken over by his son and business partner, Charles. In later years, Charles Glynn told people that guns his father had made 75 years earlier were still in excellent working order.

Glynn’s Gun Shop was widely known for its eclectic range of items. Charles Glynn was said to have owned a crossbow that would shoot a steel arrow with such force it could have knocked an armour-clad knight off his horse at 100 yards. The crossbow was reputed to have been used at the Battle of Hastings.