by Phil Egan Special for The Sarnia Journal
He arrived by way of London and the old Errol Road, driving a team of oxen and a cart filled with goods he intended to sell. His destination was the collection of log shanties huddled together at “The Rapids.”
He was 28 years old. The year was 1833.
Nobody in his family was quite sure why George Durand had left his home in today’s Niagara Region for this sparsely populated tract of wilderness settlement. His father James, a celebrated British officer who had fought at Queenston Heights under General Sir Isaac Brock, had just died, the victim of an accident in which his horses had bolted and had thrown him from his wagon. A brother-in-law, Peter Hamilton, was about to give the future “city by the mountain” his name.
He arrived determined to carve himself a living. He did just that, with enviable success. Together with Richard Emeric Vidal and Malcolm Cameron, he would go down in local lore as one of the three founding fathers of Sarnia.
George became Sarnia’s first storekeeper. The store was a small log cabin located near the present site of the TD Canada Trust building at Christina Street and London Road, part of a 200 acre tract of land his father had earlier purchased here the year before.. He had limited capital, but a shrewd head for business and a growing reputation for scrupulous honesty. The business flourished. Durand traded both with local settlers and with Indians from as far as Manitoulin – taking in furs and “maple sugar” in return for goods.
In 1837 he married a 17 year-old girl named Mary Jones. That same year he was appointed postmaster, a role he would maintain for fifteen years. In 1836, he constructed the first sawmill in this part of the country. The mill wheel was powered by water from Perch Creek that he brought in by means of a canal. Running along the north side of George Street, which eventually took his name, it became known as “Durand’s Ditch.”
Realizing the importance of timber in a growing community, he went into the lumber business in 1839, but never entirely gave up shopkeeping. He opened another, bigger store in 1842, maintaining a steady business in bolts, staves, hoops and oak timber in addition to general stores.
His reputation grew. He invested in large tracts of land, and was elected to District Council. In the early 1850s, he built what became known as the “Durand Block” on Front Street, described as “quite an ornament” for the town. Durand donated the land on which Our Lady of Mercy School and Church would sit. He began building vessels to ship lumber, and heartily promoted road building, bringing a petition to council in 1861 to build the Plank Road.
George Durand retired on the Niagara River, near where his father had fought at Queenston. He died in 1880 and is buried at Ancaster.
The name of George Durand was closely associated with the growth and progress of Sarnia for the better part of half a century.