By Phil Egan for The Sarnia Journal The year I turned 24, my dad’s garage was full of Swipe, “The Miracle Cleaner.” This was going to be my ticket back to third year at University of Windsor. All my aunts and uncles, and everyone who visited my parents’ home, owned [...]
by Phil Egan - Special to The Sarnia Journal (2015) In his 1961 book, A History of the Chemical Industry in Lambton County, R.W. Ford describes the Bushnell Refinery, built in 1871, as the “first of Sarnia’s refineries.” Records indicate, however, that this information is not correct. Sarnia’s earliest refinery [...]
By Phil Egan - Special to The Sarnia Journal (2015) If houses could talk, this one could spin captivating tales It sits in stately and understated grandeur in a park in Bright’s Grove. Its two-storeys are clad in the distinctive Wawanosh yellow brick fired in the Telfer Road brickyard kilns. [...]
by Phil Egam - Special to The Sarnia Journal, Then and Now. (2015) In the late 60s, I worked for a time as a bartender in the old Pine Room of the Vendome Hotel. It was a downstairs bar that could be entered either from the hotel above or from [...]
By Phil Egan - Special for the Sarnia Jouranl, Then and Now. Sarnians who drive along Lawrence Avenue or visit the Lawrence Park neighbourhood in Toronto likely never make the connection with the Lawrence House on Christina Street, or the Lawrence Lumber yards that once sat at the foot of [...]
By Phil Egan - Special to The Sarnia Journal (2015) It is a warm evening in early July, 1910. King George V is in his second month on the throne of the British Empire. Sir Wilfred Laurier is Prime Minister. You have just boarded the 100 foot long ferry, Skater [...]
By Phil Egan special for The Sarnia Journal We breeze along the 402 Highway today with exasperation if a construction delay makes our journey longer than an hour. For Sarnia’s early settlers, it was never that easy. Founding father Malcolm Cameron had built the road to London, but from spring [...]
By Phil Egan, Special to The Sarnia Journal, Then and Now. (2015) Dawn broke that morning on a warm, clear day. There was no humidity in the air. A breeze from the river, at times brisk, swirled up clouds of dust on the dirt roads of Front Street. It was [...]
By Phil Egan - Special to the Sarnia Journal, Then and Now. Iceman wasn’t just a hotshot pilot in Top Gun. He was once a regular visitor to our homes. Like the milkman, he came in a horse-drawn wagon, and later a truck. As late as the early 1950s, the [...]
By Phil Egan – Special to the Sarnia Journal, Then and Now. It began with the blowing of a company whistle. At 4:45 pm on June 28, 1913, the sound of that whistle heralded the opening of Sarnia’s new H. Mueller Manufacturing plant at 100 Clifford Street. It was a [...]
