By Dan McCaffery for the Sarnia Observer
Six decades before Prime Minister Jean Chretien introduced a national “infrastructure program” in a bid to combat high unemployment, Sarnia Mayor Arthur Kirby was doing the same thing at the local level.
Born in Yorkshire, England, Kirby came to Canada as a four-year old.
He worked as a mechanical superintendent at Imperial Oil, married Ottelie Miller and had two sons.
Elected to City Council as an Alderman in 1925, Kirby took over as our 48th Chief Magistrate five years later.
It was a difficult time to assume the top political post. The stock market had crashed just two months before he was sworn into office, plunging the world into the Great Depression.
Sarnia was better off than most Canadian Communities, mainly because the Electric Auto-Lite Company opened a plant in the City in 1930. Nevertheless, the Municipality was hit hard by the Depression and unemployment lines soon swelled.
To help alleviate the suffering Mayor Kirby’s Council began upgrading the City’s infrastructure. Officially, City Fathers wanted to enhance roads and sewers but, unofficially, they were just as interested in the jobs such projects would create.
Summing up Mayor Kirby’s achievements after he left office, The Observer reported “his tenure as Mayor was immediately following the world economic crisis of 1929 and it was his responsibility to find work for the hundreds of unemployed among the citizens of Sarnia.
It was during this period that the Exmouth Street sewer was constructed, Russel Street was paved, the Vidal Street bridge over the CNR tunnel cut was built, the Lochiel Street sewer was laid and the Municipal garden on Ferry Dock Hill was laid out”.
Mayor Kirby was re-elected in 1931 but then retired from politics for almost a decade.
He made a comeback in 1940 when he was elected to Council as an Alderman.
Kirby died at his 338 Vidal Street S. home on January 17, 1945, at age 68.