Sarnia’s creative community

A Sarnia-Lambton writer pays tribute to the late Bob McCarthy, a cornerstone of the local Writers Helping Writers group. The letter recalls McCarthy’s warm mentorship, storytelling that blended local history with fantasy, and his determined fight to clear Elizabeth Workman’s name. It celebrates the rich creative heritage that continues to shape our community.

“Hello. Welcome,” I can see Bob McCarthy saying on a Monday afternoon nearly ten years ago at the Writers Helping Writers group in the Point Edward library. “Welcome.”

Sarnia-Lambton’s creative community has a rich heritage worth celebrating. For instance, about three years after his passing, I remember Bob again.

A decade ago, I was a newbie writer, anxiously seeking feedback. I’d heard about WHW so I just showed up.

“Welcome,” Bob said.

Bob himself was a respected writer about and throughout Lambton County.

Sometimes he wrote a kind of historical fiction with a fantasy twist centered on misty episodes in Lambton County history. Often involving a visiting spirit.

For instance, there was Bob’s series of stories featuring the First Nations Chief who came back as a spirit to tell his story to some children. When I questioned Bob about the advisability of appropriating the voice of a First Nation chief, Bob thanked me for my input and carried on writing as he always had. No changes made. No community objections.

Sometimes he wrote straight-up history. Everything from the memories of Saturday night dancing to the Guy Lombardo trio in the 1940’s at Kenwick-on-the-Lake to more offbeat “stories that matter in Lambton County”. Such as the broken pieces of Omeara’s violin first played at St. John in the Wilderness church in Brights Grove in 1856. Omeara himself reportedly met Jack Benny. “Who also played the violin,” Bob would inevitably add with a smile.

Bob was not overly impressed that one of my first teenage jobs was at the Chalet Motel, now Waggs, in whose parking lot she was hanged. “Uh huh,” he said.

Personally, I was particularly captured by his children’s stories about a family of talking bunnies.

Bob encouraged each WHW writer’s individualism. He was famous for saying, “This is just a suggestion. You should only change it if you want to, if it makes sense to you.”

Fantasy was one thing. But facts mattered. My The Sarnia Journal early draft about a long-ago strawberry social at what was then Patterson Memorial church. I remembered warm weather so I wrote a Saturday in May. Bob commented, “Good article, Bob. Just a couple of things. It was never held on a Saturday, and it wasn’t a Strawberry Social. It was a Strawberry Supper, with sloppy joes and an auction, held at 5:30 on a weekday near the end of June every year.”

Of course, there was Bob’s prominent advocacy, petitioned to the Governor General, to clear the name of Elizabeth Workman who, as Bob recounted in Case 666: Travesty of Justice was hanged in 1873 for the murder of her abusive husband.

In his later years, supportive and tenacious Bob contributed to our group by Zoom from his bed in Hospice.

Bob, I can see us somehow connecting again down the road, ordering your favourite fish and chips, and teasing each other about who was ‘Bob’ and who was ‘the other Bob.’

“Welcome,” we will say together then. “Welcome."