By Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
Mayor Edward J. Blake headed the Council that was accused of trying to muzzle the press with “Nazi” tactics.
Known to his friends as “Teddy”, Blake was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1879.
He came to Canada as a seven-Year old, living in Montreal before his family moved to Point Edward.
As a young man he took up residence in Sarnia and got a job as a locomotive engineer. Later, the father of four went to work at the local Imperial Oil refinery.
Blake entered politics in 1925, winning a seat on the Public School Board. Five years later, he was elected to City Council as an Alderman.
When Mayor Gordon Hodgins died in office in early 1934, Council voted to replace him with Alderman Blake.
At first the City’s 52nd Chief Magistrate was very popular, at least partly because he called himself “a working man’s Mayor”. He openly declared he wouldn’t be in his office every day because his day job came first.
But the new Mayor soon got into hot water with the press. It happened when Council voted to ban reporters from a meeting unless they allowed Council to edit their stories prior to publication.
“City Council, which met informally last evening, displayed an element of Nazism when it contended that if the press were admitted to the meeting, the reporters should present their copy to the Council for censorship before publication”, The Observer reported in a 1934 story.
Needless to say, the newspaper refused to allow politicians to edit its stories and reporters were allowed back into the next meeting.
Mayor Blake’s Council was also capable of playing hardball with people who refused to pay their taxes. It proved that when it passed a motion declaring tax arrears would be collected through “garnishee, suit and seizure of chattels”.
The action came at a time when ratepayers owed the City a whopping $470,000.00. Some of the money had been overdue for eight years.
More than a few people thought the measure, coming in the midst of the Great Depression, was too harsh.
Mayor Blake showed his compassionate side when he convinced Council to pay $75.00 a month to doctors willing to treat sick people living on “relief”.
The move allowed some of Sarnia’s poorest residents to get medical attention they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.
After leaving Council, Blake was elected to Sarnia Hydro Commission, serving on that body until his death, at age 68, on April 7, 1947.