By Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
When Albert Johnston was elected Sarnia’s 30th Mayor, the Community was still attempting to adjust to the 20th century.
It was 1910, a time when The Observer could report in the same issue that an automobile manufacturing company was considering coming to Town and that a runaway horse had smashed through a plate glass window on Front Street.
Born in rural Lambton County in 1869, Johnston taught school for a few years before moving to Sarnia to become a Pharmacist. He set up his own business at the corning of Front and Cromwell Streets that became known as the White-Front Drug Store.
Elected to Town Council in 1904, he served six years as an Alderman before beating Fred Watson out for the Mayor’s Chair. Watson was a popular former Mayor but Johnston defeated him by 325 votes.
Johnston had no sooner been sworn in than he was faced with what The Observer called the “mad dog” crisis.
Under the headline ‘Sarnians Beware of Mad Dogs’, the newspaper noted “in Sarnia we have hundreds of useless curs, most of them allowed to run at large. Only yesterday a big hound seized a child by the face and throat and sunk its fangs half an inch deep into the child’s throat”. Another citizen, the story added, had just left for the United States to undergo rabies treatments.
The new Mayor moved swiftly to tackle the canine problem, pushing through a bylaw prohibiting dogs from running at large without a muzzle.
Council also imposed a tax on dogs, charging owners $2.00 for a male and $4.00 for a bitch.
Also during his one year at the helm, Council convinced Bell Canada that it should modernize the Town’s phone system, which consisted of 600 telephones.
Johnston, who lived at 183 Christina Street S. with his wife Jessie Louise and their two sons, did not seek re-election in 1911.