Phil Egan for The Sarnia Journal Roz Green is a curious lady, and Sarnians can be grateful for that curiosity. The musician was strolling in her central Toronto neighbourhood recently when something caught her eye. Two large, wooden panels were laying curbside, presumably awaiting the trash collector. Green thought her [...]
Tom Slater and St. Amand, special to The Sarnia Journal The fallen soldier was Sarnia’s Thomas Edwin Lee and his public funeral, held against German orders, is a poignant reminder that acts of compassion can occur even amid the horrors of war. In 1941, Thomas Lee enlisted in the [...]
Tom St. Amand and Lou Giancarlo, special to The Sarnia Journal (2016) Sarnia war historian Tom Slater was visiting SCITS one day in 2012 when he noticed a memorial plaque displayed outside the main office. Engraved on it were the names of former students who died serving Canada [...]
Tom St. Amand and Tom Slater, special to The Sarnia Journal (2016) When he established the Peace Corps in 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy reminded participants that their lives might not be easy but would “be rich and satisfying.” Perhaps that was the reason years earlier Sarnian [...]
Susan Roberts, special to The Sarnia Journal (2016) Captain Melville Roy Clarke (1893-1971) was my only grandparent born in Canada, and the ultimate Canadian veteran. As a preschooler, his three-fingered hand fascinated me. I would ask him where the missing digit used to be and he’d kindly point to the [...]
Phil Egan, special to The Sarnia Journal (2016) For most of the men and women of the ‘Greatest Generation’ who answered their country’s call, the Second World War was the grand adventure of their lives. For Bill Gunter, it was a terrifying and punitive hell on earth, the emotional and [...]
Phil Egan, special for The Sarnia Journal (2016) Forty-one years after his last visit to the Netherlands, Jim Charron finally returned. The reception he received stunned him. It was 1985, the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The grateful people of the Netherlands, it turned out, [...]
Tom St. Amand and Tom Slater, special to The Sarnia Journal Winston Churchill once confessed: “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” His fears were not unfounded. Overall, German submarines sank over 2,500 merchant ships and 175 navy vessels in [...]
Phil Egan, special to The Sarnia Journal (2016) If you were fortunate enough to live in Sarnia during the First World War there were jobs galore at Mueller Brass. Lured here in 1912 by Mayor Joseph Dagan with a $30,000 bonus, Mueller Brass opened modestly with 22 employees. They worked [...]
Phil Egan, special to The Sarnia Journal John Allan never had a chance to meet either of his great-uncles, but their heroism has long been treasured by his family. Allan, who works in MP Marilyn Gladu’s constituency office, is an amateur historian who plans to write a book one day [...]
