Meeting the Founder of SHS

On Thursday April 2nd the board set out to fulfill two missions.  The first was to take a picture at the Sarnia Public Library for an upcoming newspaper article which will chronicle our recent efforts.  Once we had finished our photo shoot, we headed over to meet the founder of SHS, George Ludgate.

We met George at his home. He told us that he was born in Detroit but grew up in Kingston.  His father was a railroad engineer and when he lost his job in Michigan his dad moved the family to Ontario.  After completing high school in Kingston, George studied at Lauren Greene’s Academy of Radio Arts.  His first job was at the Kirkland Lake radio station, where he earned $140 a month.  After one year in Kirkland Lake, George was transferred to the radio station in Peterborough.  While in Peterborough, he did the play by play for the Intermediate Football Championship.  When Claude Erwin, owner of Sarnia’s CHOK radio station, heard him announcing the game he decided that he wanted to hire George to take on broadcasting the local Sarnia Imperials Football games. George accepted the job offer and moved to Sarnia in 1954.

George later became a program director at the radio station.  Following his career as a sports broadcaster, George returned to school and earned his MBA and later his PhD.  He taught for several years at Baker College in Port Huron.

At our meeting George explained to us that his interest in Sarnia’s history was piqued in the early 1960s when space was being cleared to build the Drawbridge Inn on Christina Street.  George knew that one of the buildings about to be torn down had originally belonged to Prime Minister Mackenzie and he believed that it should be protected as a historical site.  He even went so far as to appeal to then Prime Minister Diefenbaker, who was visiting Sarnia in the summer of 1961, to save the building.  Unfortunately the plans had already been approved and there was no way to block the demolition of the building.  The only remaining piece of the old building is the water pump, which remains to this day inside the Drawbridge Inn.