by Jean Turnbull Elford in Canada West’s Last Frontier
(1982) Point Edward, Lambton’s largest incorporated village, placed where Lake Huron empties into the River St. Clair, made its way into recorded history earlier than any other part of Lambton. The first written account comes from the pen of Father Hennepin in 1679, a priest aboard La Salle’s ship, the Griffon. He tells of the difficulty experienced in finding a channel out of Lake St. Clair and of arriving at Lake Huron only to find the passage blocked by a north wind. Though a south wind did come up, the ship still couldn’t navigate the rapids under sail, but as “the shore was very fine” men were landed who towed the ship into the lake.
Next Monsieur de la Motte Cadillac, who established Fort Ponchartrain at Detroit for King Louis XIV in 1701, in informing the French government of the location of Indian tribes in the area made this note:
“Lake Huron – At the entrance to this lake there is a small village of 60 Mississaugas carrying arms. Their coat of arms is a crane.”
The Mississaugas were succeeded by Wyandots who called their holding Pet-tag-wano. These Indians seem to have left during the American Revolution.
Some years after the British surrender of Detroit to the Americans in 1796, Point Edward was set aside as a military reserve to guard the entrance to Lake Huron, but never fortified. It was named in honour of Queen Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent, commander of all military forces in British North America from 1791 to 1802.
Roswell Mount surveyed the reserve in 1829. His map shows a fishery on the site of the Sarnia Yacht Club, where Henry Jones had a licence to fish until 1834.
In 1837 Malcolm Cameron was granted “a license of occupation for three years with privilege of purchasing should he within that time erect a grist and sawmill thereon…’ The committee that granted the license found in 1842 that “the minute of council permitting Mr. Cameron to purchase was made in ignorance of the land applied for, being a military Reserve…under the report of the Commanding officer of the Engineers, the land cannot be disposed of, or a license of occupation given or renewed.”
Meanwhile in 1840 Malcolm Cameron had succeeded in getting John Robson a 12 year lease on the east side of the village. Cameron had Robson come from Perth to assist him in his temperance work. To gain a living for his very large family, Robson farmed at the Point, fished in the river, and butchered and sold his livestock. His wife sold her butter and eggs to the soldiers at Fort Gratiot and to Port Huron merchants. It was a lean living, and Robson left for Sombra in 1852 to become the first jailer.
By this time the Grand Trunk had decided to extend their line that began in Portland, Maine, from St. Marys to Point Edward and to cross their trains to Port Huron to connect with a line running to Detroit. From Detroit a line ran to Chicago.
This would mean coming on ordnance land that could not be sold. But sold they were or most of them. Details of the sale were uncovered by a Mr. Chapman of England on a visit of inspection on behalf of English investors in the Grand Trunk, caused him to say, “jobbery and corruption were the rules, honesty and integrity the exception.”
The editor of the Sarnia paper gave his version of the affair in an issue of his paper dated January 4, 1861. According to him the government sold 664 acres of the ordnance land at $2 an acre with the understanding it was needed for the railway. The railway got 60 acres and 504 acres fell into the hands of Gzowski and Company, a company for whom Sir John A. MacDonald was the attorney. MacDonald bought 900 acres adjacent to the ordnance land from Malcolm Cameron at $9 an acre and added them to the company’s holdings. All land purchases were made for eight thousand pounds and sold to the Grand Trunk for thirty thousand.
As Point Edward contains only 706 acres, and Sarnia acquired a number of acres of ordnance land for the park on the north side of the village in 1938, the company’s holdings must have included acreage further east for right-of-way.
On November 21, 1859, the first regular train, made up of several freight cars and three passenger coaches carrying 200, crossed the river by ferries on its way from Detroit. After ceremonies to mark the opening of the line, the train proceeded east along what is now Cathcart Boulevard on its way to Toronto.
Thanks to the railway a community was formed, and according to an 1864 directory it was occupied mostly by railway employees. Exceptions were a Dr. Dingwall; John McMillan, a blacksmith; John Phillips, a policeman; and Edward Maines, a grocer. By 1865 Louis Ernst had opened another grocery, where the village post office located on March 1 of that year with Ernst the first postmaster. The village had its own post office until 1962 when it became a sub-station for the Sarnia office and house-to-house delivery was started.
Included in the 1864 list of inhabitants was John McAvoy, who managed the Grand Trunk Hotel in conjunction with the station. This station was said to have no rival for excellence west of Toronto. It burned in 1871 but was replaced only to be torn down after the building of the St. Clair Tunnel. Besides overnight accommodation and a dining room it had first and second class waiting rooms. Edward, Prince of Wales, was entertained there in 1860, Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, and Lord Monck in 1862.
Monck was remembered when the village streets were named; two are named for him, Charles and Monck (He was Charles Stanley, Viscount Monck, governor of Canada 1861-1867). Other streets are named after members of the British Royal Family: Victoria and Albert for the queen and her consort; Arthur, Alfred, Helena and Alice for some of their children; Alexandra for the Queen of Edward VII; and Maud for their daughter. Fort is in deference to the military site, St. Clair for the river; Michigan for the nearby state; Livingstone for the first reeve. He had Michigan Avenue extended back to Murphy in 1878. For a time this extension bore the name of the “New Road.”
Passenger service to the upper lakes accelerated at the Point after 1872, when the Beatty Transportation Company having obtained a contract to take mail to Canadian ports along the upper lakes, brought out the Manitoba. They increased their fleet to accommodate the heavy immigrant traffic and to carry supplies for building the Canadian Pacific Railway.
In connection with the elaborate station was an immigrant shed and provision for bathing in the river. Here, whole trainloads of people numbering from 500 to 1,000 washed their clothes and bathed themselves before embarking for their trip up the Lakes.
A man belonging to a party of Icelanders who went through in 1875 left a brief account of his passage:
“At Sarnia we stopped overnight. Everything was extraordinarily expensive there. Accommodation for one person costs a dollar, even if there were three to share it…..”
A steady stream of immigrants passed through until 1885 when the Canadian Pacific Railway was finished as far as Winnipeg. While traffic was lighter after that, ships still ran with mail and goods to ports not on a railway.
Point Edward’s growth had snowballed with the increase of business on the Grand Trunk, occasioned not only by the immigrant traffic but by the opening of the American West and by the rapid growth of Chicago. Supplies for that city were going out and grain coming in for shipment east to Atlantic ports. Affairs were so prosperous that in 1878 the village, commonly called Huron, incorporated under its proper name.
Those elected to the first council were Reeve, Dugald Livingstone; Councillors, Patrick Coyle, Joseph Kraupp, George Paton, D. Whittaker; clerk and collector, James Palmer; treasurer, W. Wiley; assessor, J.F. O’Neil; constable, Walter Wake.
The amalgamation of the Grand Trunk and the Great Western Railways in 1882 brought increased activity to the place. The line into Sarnia was extended along the Bay into Point Edward. The Sarnia railway ferries ceased running, and all cross-river rail traffic was handled at the village.
In the year of this amalgamation, the village had no less than five hotels: the Coutlee House; Montreal House, whose advertisement stated that the horse-drawn streetcars from Sarnia went by his door every 20 minutes, the Holder House, National Hotel and the Dominion House. Even with its five hotels, the village did not have the accommodation for travellers it has now with its three large motels; the Guildwood, the Holiday Inn, and the 402 Motor Inn, formerly the Village Inn.
Newspapers, on the other hand, have not survived as well as facilities for travellers. In 1884 the village had the “Independent” which lasted only a short time. A second paper, the “Post” published by W.J. Williams came out in 1866. In 1892 Williams took his paper to Sarnia and combined it with the “Sarnia Sun.”
Barter was still a factor in business in the days of those papers as may be seen from this abbreviated advertisement of November, 1887:
Boomer and McDonald
of the Golden Lion, Point Edward
Dry goods, clothing, Hats and Caps
Boots and Shoes, Hardware, and a
Very choice selection of Family
Groceries and…
We are the only general merchants in Point Edward.
We can buy everything you have to sell in Butter,
Eggs, and all kinds of farm and garden produce,
for goods or cash….”
When this advertisement appeared, the fate of Point Edward was in jeopardy. Work had started on the St. Clair Tunnel between Sarnia and Port Huron. Four years later, December 7, 1891, the last train crossed the river on Grand Trunk ferries.
Trouble did not come singly. In 1892 fire destroyed much of the business section. In 1893 the situation was so grave that Point Edward voted 119 to 2 to amalgamate with Sarnia if the Grand Trunk’s main shops were built at the Point. By 1899 these shops had been located at Stratford.
At the same time the railway yards at Point Edward were replaced with ones at Sarnia. Employees had no ready means of commuting, for it was not until 1901 that Sarnia street cars were electrified and several more years before they ran to the tunnel. Faced with lack of transportation, railway employees moved all through 1900 from the Point to Sarnia, often taking their houses with them.
This made houses so scarce that there were not enough left to house the employees of the G.A. Crosby Company Limited when it located in the Point in 1901. Some 40 or 50 of them had to go back and forth by ferry to Port Huron. This English company, makers of machinery for manufacturing cars, presses and dies for sheet metal work, and brake shoes for railway use, leased land for 20 years from the Grand Trunk. They erected three buildings; an office, foundry and warehouse and went into production using electrical power in the spring of 1902 with about 130 men.
Before that the Point had little besides shipping and the business generated by the grain elevator built by the Grand Trunk. The first elevator was built in 1859 and burned in 1877. It was replaced in 1879, and its replacement burned in 1903. The one built to take its place burned in 1913 bringing the elevator business at Point Edward to an end.
Starting in 1902 iron ore from the Mesabi Range was brought into Point Edward by ship and sent to the steel mills at Hamilton by the Grand Trunk Railway. Ships could only carry about 1900 tons a trip to te mills on account of the shallowness of the Welland Canal whereas they could carry 3000 tons into Point Edward. Many men were employed in this trade, and as many as 300 cars of ore were shipped out a day.
Once again, progress, as in the case of the tunnel, worked against Point Edward. The opening in 1932 of the new and deeper Welland Canal permitted ships to carry capacity loads from the Upper Lakes into Lake Ontario.
Point Edward lost its stone cutting plant too, on account of the new canal. It let ships carry stone closer to the big markets. In 1915 the Central Stone Cutting Company had established their works in a vacated railway building. Indiana limestone was brought in by ship, cut, and sent to southern Ontario markets over the Grand Trunk Railway (known as Canadian National after 1923). The stone cutting company supplied stone cut in Point Edward for such well-known buildings in Toronto as the Royal York Hotel, Union Station, and Eaton’s College Street Store.
Though shipping declined drastically due to the canal, the Northern Navigation cruise ships still ran out of the Point. The Huronic ran from 1902 to 1950, the Harmonic from 1908 to 1945, and the Noronic from 1913 to 1949. Passengers came in by rail all through the summer to take a trip on the Upper Lakes. Linens for the ships were all handled in a laundry built at the Point in 1913. Before and after the passenger season, the ship carried flour down from the Lakehead and took up package freight.
Freight handling was important at Point Edward for over 100 years. Many men were engaged by the railroad to load and unload ships and box cars. Business was still good enough after the freight sheds burned in 1945 that new ones were built. Until the Seaway opened in 1959, much of the produce from Chemical Valley went out through Point Edward. After that ships loaded these products at the government docks in Sarnia. Still work continued at the freight sheds until 1972, when they were closed. Containerization, along with lower rail rates, and increased use of trucks helped bring this about as did the opening of manufacturing places in western Canada.
Point Edward still had Holmes Foundry and Electric Autolite. The former has been operating since 1919 on Exmouth Street. Construction started on the latter in 1929. It was re-named Prestolite and functioned until 1978. A follow-up firm known as Sarnia Electric Motors launched in 1980 and lasted only a few months. In 1981 Petrosar bought the site and buildings for office and storage use.
Point Edward’s oldest industry, fishing, is still important. The land assigned to Henry Jones, who settled near Bright’s Grove, included a fishery on the north side of Point Edward. From the diaries of Jones’s son it is learned that a number of men were engaged and shelter built for them at the Point. The only fish mentioned specifically in the diaries are sturgeon and black bass.
On May 16, 1832, Jones wrote, “number of fish caught200 barrels,” and two months later on July 27, “number of fish caught 150 pounds.” Jones, who would have to cure the fish for marketing, was plagued with poachers. It is probable that the venture was not profitable, for he let it revert to the crown in 1834.
Four years later John P. Slocum of New York State obtained a license to run the fishery. Around 1849 Slocum’s son took over the business and eventually took Samuel Hitchcock into partnership with him.
In the fall of 1865, the editor of the Sarnia newspaper related that fresh herring were sent along the railway as far as Hamilton and “even as far as Toronto” and that “The rest were cured and packed for winter sale and exportation.” He wrote that Samuel Hitchcock caught 15,000 at one haul – equal to 40 barrels. Farmers, the editor claimed, “take away wagon loads of fresh fish at 50 cents per hundred and cure them themselves.”
In 1908 Marcus Hitchcock supplied about 10 million fish eggs to stock the fish hatchery that opened that year. The provincial government took it over in 1926 and operated with eggs taken from fish at the local fishery until 1955. The hatchery closed that year and restocking is done from another hatchery.
Purdy’s came to Point Edward to fish in 1943. Their catch differs from that of their predecessors in that herring are much reduced numbers due to the introduction of shad through the seaway. Sturgeon are not as numerous but more profitable, and salmon stocked in Michigan are caught now. The scavenger fish are of more value than they were since they are used for pet foods and fertilizers. The main and most profitable catches are whitefish and pickerel. They are marketed in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto.
Enterprises starting and terminating have caused the population of Point Edward to fluctuate considerably. When the census was taken in 1891 just before the St. Clair Tunnel opened, the population was 1,881. By 1901 with the railway activities curtailed, it had shrunk to 780. From then on it increased so that it reached a peak of 2,903 in 1966. By 1981 it had fallen again to 2,397, the lowest it has been since 1956, but still much larger than it ever was at its height as a railway centre.
A very large increase in population is not likely as Point Edward is contained in 706 acres. These acres are in a block of land that is no longer shaped like a point. On the south is Exmouth Street, on the west the St. Clair River. The northern border is defined by the railway track. The eastern boundary is partly Christina Street, but part of the Sarnia Golf Course, including the clubhouse, is in Point Edward. In addition, a block on the east between the railway and Christina and between Michigan Avenue and Canatara Park is a section of Sarnia used for a municipal dump.
The Bluewater Bridge dominates the village skyline. Erected in 1938, it crosses over the narrow stretch of water that the Grand Trunk ferries began to cross in 1859. The Customs and Immigration office and the Ontario Tourist Bureau at the end of the bridge are located on what used to be part of Bayview Park. This park, formerly on Sarnia Bay, was given to the village by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1889.
The geography of Sarnia Bay and Point Edward underwent changes when the grain elevators were built in Sarnia in 1927. The Bay was made smaller and Point Edward larger with soil dredged out at the government dock and from the north slip. Until then the Bay extended north from Centennial Park across the west end of Alexandra Avenue almost to Michigan Avenue in a line that followed approximately that of the road that goes north from Exmouth Street to the bridge plaza. The new land was planted with trees to hold the soil. When it stabilized, buildings were erected on it. Among them are two motels and a machine shop. The western portion was given over to a marina for 580 boats. In 1981 construction began on housing units beside the marina [Editor’s Note: Elford is referring to Venetian Village].
As well as the park, the Grand Trunk gave the village its first church. Now St. Paul’s Anglican, it was originally used by the Presbyterians and Methodists as well. The Presbyterians built a church in 1872 and bricked it over in 1972. The Methodists built one in 1873 and replaced it with a new United one in 1959. In 1902 the Anglican Church, whose tin steeple had served as a navigational aid, was moved from Livingstone Street to Michigan Avenue. It was restored during the pastorate of Rev. Denton Massey, O.B.E., in 1962. A Gospel Hall opened on Monck Street in 1936 and closed in 1970. It was not until 1957 that the Roman Catholics of the village had a church. With it, the village had four places of worship.
The Anglican Church, the brick houses on Livingstone Street, built by the railway for its employees, are among the oldest buildings in the place. Others are the Balmoral Hotel, much changed since it was built as the Holder House in the 1870s, and the apartment between the police station and the United Church, which was formerly the Anglican rectory. A portion of the Queen’s Hotel, built in 1883, still stands on the corner of Livingstone Street and Michigan Avenue.
New since the Second World War, in addition to the churches mentioned, are a number of one-family homes and four buildings erected in the 1950s: the public school 1950, the arena 1955, the separate school 1955, and the public utilities building 1956. Built in the sixties are the sewage plant 1961, firehall and village library 1965, and in the seventies, the municipal building, 1971.
Years have added enchantment to the past, but Point Edward is more heavily populated, better housed, more prosperous, and enjoys more public services than it did in its days as a railroad centre. It has some 15 retail outlets and more than that number of services and secondary industries functioning in it. Its enviable position on the waterfront was enhanced by the opening of a small park along the water’s edge in 1965. Here by the Bluewater Bridge where the Grand Trunk’s station stood, people gather to fish and to watch the river traffic that began with the passage of LaSalle’s Griffon over 300 years ago.