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 Sarnia Ice Company had 22 trucks busily delivering ice to homes in the community. This writer can recall his visits to our home in Point Edward during that time, bringing a large block of ice for the kitchen icebox.
In the days before electric refrigerators were common, an icebox, also referred to as a cold cabinet, was a common kitchen appliance. A block of ice was placed in the cabinet’s upper compartment. Cold air circulated down and around food storage compartments in the lower area. Hollow walls were insulated to keep in the cold air. It was a fairly simple contraption, but it worked.
In the old days of the late 19th century, the ice came from Sarnia Bay, a dicey proposition that was wholly at the mercy of the weather. Typically, the season was short, usually four weeks ranging from late January to mid to late February. From 60 to 120 men might be put to work scraping snow from the ice, then using a sled with a gasoline engine mounted on it that drove a circular saw to cut through the ice. Blocks 12 to 14 inches thick were cut in 22 inch squares, then stored in sheds near the river. Packed with sawdust, they would be stored through the winter and spring until the peak demand period of summer.
In the days before air-conditioning and freezing food and baked goods, the importance of harvesting ice as an industry cannot be over emphasized. Ships would sail the ocean’s waters laden with tons of the precious commodity. Even India was a heavy consumer, although half the cargo would have melted by the time the vessels put into port.
William A. Brown was Sarnia first “iceman,” setting up a plant in the late 19th century. W.D. Ferguson, later the first president of the Sarnia YMCA, bought the ice business in 1907, at a time when mild weather was creating poor ice harvests on the Bay. He decided to begin the wholescale manufacture of artificial ice on a large scale.
Nevertheless, as late as 1923 massive amounts of ice were still being harvested, with just under 1,000 rail car loads taken from Sarnia Bay. Most of it that year headed for the ice houses of the Grand Trunk Railway in Port Huron, and for those of Northern Navigation for its lake steamers, and some for Imperial Oil.
The Sarnia Ice Company is gone now, its location at London Road and Front Streets now replaced by the fourteen-storey Tricar condominium building. Manufactured ice is the norm today, but memories of the ice harvesting days linger on at the quaint little Knowlton’s Ice Museum of North America in Port Huron, where implements and conveyances of those lost days are still displayed.
For them, at least, ice harvesting is still a viable business.