By Phil Egan, Special to The Sarnia Journal
(2015) She was, in many ways, Sarnia royalty.
Her grandfather was Captain Richard Emeric Vidal, one of the three founding fathers of the city. Charlotte Street was named for her. She was the daughter of Alexander Vidal, manager of the Bank of Upper Canada, a member of the Senate and another of Sarnia’s most prominent citizens.
She was also the wife of an important banker, Thomas Nisbet, the celebrated founder of Sarnia’s “Boys Brigade.”
But most importantly, Charlotte Vidal Nisbet was a keen observer of all that she surveyed, and Sarnia’s first and most celebrated historian. Without her writings and observations, we would know far less than we do today of what life was like in our city during Victorian times.
From 1935 to 1947, Charlotte Vidal Nisbet wrote a weekly column in the Sarnia Canadian Observer. She also wrote regularly for the Western Ontario Historical Notes. More than250 of these articles covered various aspects of Sarnia’s past.
Many of her tales were serialized: for example, for weeks she covered various aspects of life in the city that had taken place 100 years earlier, from the time of the earliest Scot and English settlers. Of many, of these, of course, she had intimate family knowledge. Another series took a look at vanished industries, vanished churches, and vanished lakes.
Her interests covered the entire breadth of the county. She recalled for her readers early pioneer days in Sarnia, Alvinston, Petrolia and Brigden. She looked back on the Wyoming bank robbery of 1922, and reported on old houses and building across the county. She travelled to Courtright on one occasion, and told her readers about the trip in detail.
Her writing was so prolific, well-written and all-encompassing that it today provides a rich resource for students, historians, writers and scholars interested in learning more about the area’s past and the way people lived, were entertained, and carried on business and day-to-day life.
She wrote stories about area toll gates, Sarnia’s first drama club, and the visit of Edward VII. Fashion, dress, and kitchens in 1860 were described, as well as modes of transportation and lighting since that date. Readers learned the nuances of cooking, entertainment and food in the 1880s.
Her subjects were wonderfully varied. One week she’d write about arts and crafts. The next week it might be Imperial Oil, or the area’s early Indian past. Clocks and watches, old hotels, war pigeons and the berry season – she studied them all.
Sometimes, she would tell her tales through the voices of others, quoting Chief Mee Mee on Tecumseh’s bones, or W.H. Kenny on running a grocery store.
When Nisbet travelled, her readers went with her – to Devonshire, Hadrian’s Wall and the Walled Cities of England. She took her readers to the Faroe Islands, and to Guernsey in the Channel Islands to explain the origins of Sarnia’s name. Fron The Orkney Islands to Stag Island and everything in between, she told her tales.
Charlotte Vidal Nisbet’s death in 1947 was a great loss to Sarnia and its history.