By Carl Hnatyshyn, Sarnia Observer
(2016) It was built in Rotherham, England in the late 18th or early 19th century and patrolled the Great Lakes aboard a gunboat named Prince Alfred while protecting Canada from the Fenian Brotherhood during the 1860s. Since 1869 it has been witness to military, religious and social ceremonies.
Sarnia’s Big Tom cannon is probably one of the oldest historical objects in the city, according to historians Lou Giancarlo and Tom Slater, members of the committee that saw the cast-iron cannon moved from Canatara Park to Veterans Park in 2015.
Giancarlo and Slater recently spoke about Big Tom to members of the Lambton County Genealogical Society.
“About two years ago we were talking at lunch about the cannon and I asked ‘why is it in Canatara Park’?,” Giancarlo said. “I went to the washroom, came back and found out I was the chairman of the committee to move it back to Veterans Park.”
“I knew next to nothing about it,” said Slater. “I came to Sarnia in the early Eighties so I only knew the cannon in Canatara. But once we did the research and found out that it used to be in Veterans Park, and the more I learned about the history and the huge connection to the community – the cannon had been there for so many huge events for so many years, through the Boer War, World War One and World War Two – I just knew it needed to be back there.”
With only a vague plan, some library cards and a connection to the Internet, the committee started to research Big Tom’s history, both in Lambton County as well as its roots in England.
A source of help came from renowned military historian Harold A. Skaarup, who helped point the group in the right direction, Slater said.
“He was just amazing,” he said. “Our first job was to get enough accurate information about the cannon as we could … and (Skaarup) was just an excellent resource to tap into.”
Big Tom’s story began around two centuries ago when it was manufactured by Rotherham-based English artillery maker Walker and Company during the reign of King George III. Walker and Company was a massive operation with a labour force of around 1,000 men. The company made tens of thousands of cannons each year for the British Empire, which were involved in numerous conflicts, including the Seven Years War, the Battle of Trafalgar and the American Revolutionary War.
The royal marking, or cypher, on Big Tom confirmed the cannon was built during King George’s reign, which lasted from 1760 to 1820, Giancarlo said.
Further research indicated the cannon was designed by Thomas Blomefield, England’s Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Brass Foundry, whose designs started being produced in 1787.
“We now know that Big Tom was manufactured between 1787 and 1820,” Giancarlo said. “And it’s very likely one of the oldest things in Sarnia.”
In technical terms, Big Tom was known as a Blomefield SBML 32-pounder (shell size) 56-cwt (imperial weight which equates to three tons) cannon, Slater said.
The cast-iron chase guns were often referred to as Long Toms, named after Queen Elizabeth I’s Royal Gun-founder Thomas Johnson. The cannons were used both on land and at sea – famously in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856, where Big Tom was rumoured to have been used, though there is no proof of that, Slater said – and needed a crew of anywhere from four to 12 men to operate.
“It was fascinating to find out how it was fired and how many people it took to fire it,” he said. “When you have a three-ton cannon, each of these men had a specific role to load it, to maneuver it and to operate it.”
In the 1860s, when there was trouble in Great Britain’s colonies coming from insurgent Irish nationalists, the British Empire began deploying a number of ‘Long Toms’ to Canada, Giancarlo said.
“In the mid-1860s, Irish nationalists sought independence from England. This led to conflict in some areas in the colonies,” he said. “In Canada there was a real threat of Fenians coming into Canada from the United States.
“The British were preparing for an invasion. Militias were formed, money was raised for the defense of the colony and cannons were deployed to Canada for defensive purposes,” Giancarlo said. “Big Tom was deployed to Point Edward to defend the colony here. Then it was placed on a retrofitted ferry-turned-gunboat, the Prince Alfred in 1866, to patrol the waters nearby.”
As the Fenian threat subsided, the cannon was eventually moved off the ship and transported to the military reserve base in Point Edward, Slater said, where according to articles in the Sarnia Observer, it sat and gathered moss, covered in sand and underbrush until the Town of Sarnia bought the cannon – then still known as Long Tom – in 1869.
The town subsequently placed the cannon in what was then known as Market Square (later renamed to Victoria Park, now Veterans Park), using it as a potent and solemn symbol of military sacrifice, Slater said. It sat there until 1959.
The cannon quickly became a focal point of the heart of Sarnia, and was present during ceremonies and milestones during the city’s history, including the construction of the Carnegie Library in 1903, the 1914 ceremony when Sarnia officially became a city, attended by Governor General Arthur the Duke of Connaught, and the city’s first Armistice Day in 1919. It was a gathering point and a monument that everyone recognized, Slater said.
Yet in spite of its revered place in Sarnia, Big Tom nearly became fodder during the Second World War when the federal government was scrounging for scrap metal from across the country. Such was the beloved cannon’s status within the community that citizens banded together to keep the monument where it was, Slater said.
It was during that period that Long Tom underwent an accidental name change and began being known by the moniker of Big Tom, Giancarlo said.
“It was Long Tom for the longest time, and then from what we could gather, in 1942 someone – likely from The Observer – started calling it Big Tom,” he said. “And so it turned out it was a newspaper reporter who renamed it Big Tom, probably inadvertently.”
In 1959 or 1960 though, Big Tom was moved from its 90-year home to Canatara Park, due to the construction of a new public library on Christina Street. The cannon remained in Canatara Park for over 50 years. Neither Giancarlo nor Slater found out exactly why Big Tom was kept in its temporary home for more than five decades.
“We don’t know that answer,” Slater said. “Even in the newspapers back in 1959-1960, there was nothing in them about the move, it was just moved. You’d think there would be some kind of write-up, but there was absolutely nothing while the new library was built. So it remained in Canatara Park temporarily for over 50 years.”
With the efforts of the Relocation of Big Tom Committee – which included Slater, Giancarlo, Tom St. Amand, Mike Banovsky and Randy Evans, as well as numerous volunteers from the community such as Mike Atkinson – Big Tom finally returned to its home in Veterans Park in early November last year.
“After we found out the history of Big Tom and the history of Market Square, then Victoria Park and now Veterans Park, we were very much encouraged to move it back to the park because of its historical significance,” Giancarlo said.
“And the big thing too for us is that the cannon is a military artifact,” Slater added. “It’s a symbol of the price paid by people that went to war and fought battles. It was a military tool to defend Sarnia. It’s a symbol and it just belongs in Veterans Park.”
“The cannon served as a window into the past… it was here because of an impending conflict and it helped defend our country. And having it in the park was huge,” Giancarlo said. “(Veterans Park) was the focal point in the community, it was the meeting ground for social, religious and military events from 1869 on. So it’s of huge significance to Sarnia and we hope people appreciate Big Tom and the park more, for its beauty and its historical significance.”