By Phil Egan
Much of our knowledge of old Sarnia came from the pen or the remarkable Charlotte Vidal Nisbet.
The granddaughter of Sarnia founder Richard Emeric Vidal and daughter of Senator Alexander Vidal can be considered the honourary godmother of all Sarnia historians. From 1935 until her death in 1947, more than 250 columns in the Sarnia Canadian Observer detail her fascinating tales of Sarnia’s past.
Charlotte wrote a column at the end of the Second World War, as the city was preparing its victory celebrations. They reminded her of an incident from her childhood. She had been prowling through the attic of the old Bank of Upper Canada (her father was its manager) when she had found something she didn’t understand. The young Charlotte had discovered pieces of cardboard with “letters and figures cut out and bright coloured tissue paper pasted over the back.”
Charlotte took this material down to the Senator to ask what they were for. He told his daughter that these were known as “transparencies.” He thought they had last been used to celebrate the end of the Crimean War.
Fought from October, 1853 to March, 1856, the battle on the Crimean Peninsula saw Britain withdraw 4,000 troops from the Province of Canada to fight Russia in aid of the Ottoman Turks. It had left Canada, in the decade before Confederation, virtually defenseless from rising American dreams of annexation.
There had been great jubilation in Sarnia village with the return of the troops. It was the days before coal oil and street lights. People placed the transparencies –in the windows of their homes with lit candles behind them with messages expressing their joy. Throughout the small cluster of homes that was Sarnia before it became a town in 1857, the streets were illuminated by the bright transparencies shining from every residential window.
History tells us that the custom of lighting windows in celebration was even older than the Crimean War. An English poem from the early days of nineteenth century England recalls:
“Poor foolish child how pleased was I
When news of Nelson’s victory came
Along the covered streets to fly
And see the lighted window pane.”
The old historian also remembered the end of the Great War in 1918, when “citizens of all ages filled the streets,” and how “the whistles and bells gave us the news, as there were no radios.” She spoke of “talking, laughing, singing, and young people crowded into big vehicles driving up and down the streets, and flags and bunting displayed everywhere.”
Charlotte Vidal Nisbet noticed much of the world around her. Today, we treasure her memories as a window into the fog that shrouds our past.