Phil Egan for The Sarnia Journal Roz Green is a curious lady, and Sarnians can be grateful for that curiosity. The musician was strolling in her central Toronto neighbourhood recently when something caught her eye. Two large, wooden panels were laying curbside, presumably awaiting the trash collector. Green thought her [...]
by Carl Hnatyshyn for Sarnia This Week (2016) It was built in Rotherham, England during the late 17th/early 18th century, it patrolled the Great Lakes aboard a gunboat named Prince Alfred, protecting Canada from the Fenian Brotherhood during the 1860s and it was witness to countless military, religious and social ceremonies that [...]
By Randy Evans On January 4, 1916, my maternal Grandfather Percy Bodaly enlisted to serve with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in World War One. He was 19 years old at the time. Initially as a Private but later a Corporal, his entire wartime career would be spent in the medical [...]
by Randy Evans, Special for The Sarnia Journal While conducting research at the Sarnia Library recently I came across a trio of stories from Sarnia-Lambton’s colourful past and thought readers might enjoy them. 1 – Auchtung the Kaiser: In 1916 Canada asked U.S. authorities to extradite one Albert C. Kaltschmidt [...]
by Randy Evans (2014) August 5th, 2014 marks the centenary of Canada’s entry into the First World War. The Declaration of War upon Germany began a cross-country enlistment and the eventual conscription of some 600,000 individuals who would make up the Canadian Expeditionary Force. With a population of just 10,000 [...]
by Randy Evans, as reported in the Sarnia Canadian Observer from 1914-18 Mail has always been considered, respected and treated by the parties thereto as private and confidential. In peacetime it would be inconceivable that even newsworthy correspondence between parties would be forwarded to the local press for sharing on [...]
by Randy Evans for The Sarnia Journal (2014) This year Sarnia has joined a national Remembrance to respect the 100th anniversary of Canada’s entry into the Great War. The community had good reason to reflect. Out of a population just then reaching 10,000 a total of 1,090 men and women [...]
by Randy Evans for The Sarnia Journal (2014) One hundred years ago, Canada’s initial World War One recruiting drive was in earnest. All volunteers, Sarnia’s earliest enlistees were routed into military groupings based in centres other than their hometown. But this changed in 1915 with the formation of the 70th [...]
by Randy Evans for The Sarnia Journal (2015) In the year 1891, a major controversy erupted among some of Sarnia’s leading movers and shakers over a bylaw proposed by the town’s Fire and Water Committee. Committee member and town council;;or William Weelands had vocally supported the bylaw, which proposed a [...]
