by Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
(2003) When it came to reporting the start of the Great Depression, The Observer pulled no punches. While other newspapers tried to downplay the stock market crash of October, 1929, assuring readers there was no cause for alarm, the Sarnia daily told readers “a drastic crash” had carried some stocks down almost $100 a share, sparking a “selling wave that assumed the proportions of a panic.” The next day, it had become “utter panic.”
In an editorial, The Observer told shocked readers “prices have receded so disastrously for the past six months that they have swallowed up billions of dollar worth of paper solvency and have left millions of people very flat financially.” In those days, billions of dollars would have been worth today’s equivalent of trillions.
Over the next 10 years, Sarnia suffered. By 1933 almost 2,300 of its 18,000 residents were on relief. By 1938 the city had seized 127 properties for non-payment of taxes. John Matheson, who served on city council in the 1960s, recalled hobos wandering the streets, begging for food. Some went door-to-door and his mother always gave them any food she could spare.
According to author Jean Turnbull Elford, a number of make-work projects were launched in a bid to keep food on tables. Men were paid to shovel snow, cut ice, and even to dredge Sarnia Bay where 10 old shipwrecks were dug up. Imperial Oil got into the act, introducing the five-day work week so more employees could share in the work.
The men who occupied the mayor’s chair during that bleak decade tried hard to deal with the crisis. Arthur Kirby was praised by The Observer for launching an infrastructure program that saw sewers installed and roads paved. William Crompton took it a step further, talking council into purchasing its own asphalt plant so it could launch an ambitious road rebuilding program. Edward Bedard tried to help by lowering taxes and Homer Lockhart introduced a form of ‘workfare.’
The most successful mayor of the period may have been James Newton, who talked the Electric Auto-Lite Company of Toledo, Ohio into setting up shop in the city. The move created 750 badly needed jobs.
Sarnia started coming out of the Depression in 1938, when work began on the Blue Water Bridge. When the Second World War broke out the next year there was work for anyone who wanted it.