By Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
Ebenezer Scrooge may not have been the only 19th century figure to be visited by the ghosts of Christmas.
The faded yellow minutes of a December 15, 1896, Sarnia Council meeting suggest celebrated author Charles Dickens’s apparitions may have come calling on Mayor J.G. Merrison too.
For until that fateful session the community’s 22nd Mayor had a reputation as a hard-nosed, no-sense Chief Magistrate.
Indeed, during his one year at the helm he instructed police to lay charges against those caught swimming without “proper bathing suits”.
And he talked about banning what he called “Sunday excursions”. It isn’t exactly clear what he meant by that, although it seems likely he was opposed to social outings on the Lord’s Day.
Mayor Merrison also had a Scrooge-like attitude when it came to conditions in the Town’s jail. In fact, he refused to do anything about complaints that the lockup was filthy, declaring it wasn’t possible to keep it “perfectly clean”.
In addition, his Council passed a bylaw making it illegal for people to ride their bicycles on sidewalks.
On top of all that, he came under fire after the Municipality purchased a water wagon from a London supplier without bothering to tender locally.
Still, it would be a mistake to suggest his administration was without its achievements. Under his leadership Council gave Bell Canada permission to erect telephone poles, expanded the Fire Hall and upgraded roads and sidewalks all over Town.
And there’s no indication that he was a Scrooge in his private life. While the central figure of A Christmas Carol was a lonely old businessman, Merrison was a medical Doctor in an age when physicians routinely made house calls. He was also a married father of two.
But the perception of him as an ogre might have remained intact if not for the very last motion passed at his final Council meeting.
At that session, held just 10 days before Christmas, Mayor Merrison showed his compassionate side when he talked Council into going along with a Lambton County Council proposal to open a permanent house of refuge for the poor.