by Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
You might say he was the John A. Macdonald of Sarnia politicians. Or maybe the Richard M. Nixon. Thomas Forsyth was the community’s first Mayor, serving from March 28, 1857 until he was forced to resign under a cloud five months later. The Sombra Township tavern owner assumed the top job after Sarnia’s population passed the 800 mark, allowing it to move up from village to town status. Until then, the Head of Council had been a Reeve.
His election was controversial from the start. Both Forsyth and Malcolm Cameron claimed they had won the top post but Forsyth got to the Inaugural Meeting first and took the chair.
Cameron resigned in disgust, later writing a letter to the editor in which he described Forsyth as an “ignorant and ungrateful man”.
Mayor Forsyth carried on as Head of Council until September when the courts ruled the results of the 1857 election invalid.
After leaving Council he lost his job as Post Collector when it was alleged he admitted a large quantity of brandy into the country without collecting duty. The loss to the Crown was said to be $2,400.00.
But despite the scandals, his cupboard of achievement was far from bare. In fact, under his leadership the community made rapid progress. Council decided to build a Town Hall, passed laws to widen Cromwell and Lochiel Streets and built sidewalks on Wellington, Christina and George Streets.
So many downtown improvements were made during his five months in office that the municipal tax rolls skyrocketed. According to a contemporary newspaper story, taxes in Sarnia were the highest of any Town in the region.
Mayor Forsyth may have been a ‘tax-and-spend liberal’ when it came to making downtown improvements, but he was a conservative when dealing with law enforcement. The Town hired a police constable under his leadership and he played hardball with those who didn’t obey Town bylaws, helping to push through a motion providing imprisonment for anyone who failed to pay municipal fines.
There were problems with rowdy behavior downtown that Council tried to curb by passing a bylaw to ‘regulate and licence houses of public entertainment’.
He also helped Sarnia shed its frontier image, presiding over the passage of a bylaw making it illegal for horses to run at large.
Don Poore, who narrated a 1992 televised re-enactment of Mayor Forsyth’s first Council meeting, said “the issues in those days were the horrible state of the roads, dogs running at large, people coming out of bars causing problems… Some of those issues are still on Council’s agenda today. I’m sure there is no solution to some of them”.
Just as is the case today, he had to deal with a Council that wasn’t always united. Indeed, The Observer noted in a May 7, 1857, editorial, “since the commencement of the year we have frequently alluded to the unpleasant and unsatisfactory state of our municipal affairs through the differences and dissensions among the Councillors”.
He left Sarnia for good in 1864 and is believed to have settled in Detroit.