The First World War changed Lambton far beyond the battlefield

In 1916, Lambton sent soldiers overseas as the First World War reshaped its factories, farms and families. Local battalions were broken up for reinforcements, conscription divided communities, and the losses endured long after the Armistice. Day 6 of our *11 Days of Remembrance* series.

At 5:45 on the morning of May 29, 1916, hundreds of soldiers marched through Sarnia toward the railway station on Cromwell Street. Bands played as families gathered along the route, while mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts struggled through their final goodbyes.

The men belonged to the 149th Battalion, recruited from communities throughout Lambton County and known as Lambton’s Own. They were leaving for further military training before eventually travelling overseas to fight in the First World War.

Contemporary newspaper accounts described cheering crowds and tearful farewells as the soldiers boarded their trains. The bands played Auld Lang Syne and The Girl I Left Behind Me as the men departed.

The battalion would never fight together in Europe. After reaching Britain the following year, its members were dispersed into other Canadian military formations, many of them sent to replace soldiers killed or wounded on the Western Front.

Sixteen years earlier, Sarnia had welcomed home volunteers from the South African War with parades, speeches and gifts. That conflict had marked the region’s transition from local border defence toward participation in British imperial campaigns overseas.

The First World War brought military service to a different scale. Relatively small volunteer contingents gave way to mass recruitment, industrialized warfare and eventually conscription. The fighting would reach into Lambton’s factories, farms, municipal government and households, leaving consequences that extended far beyond the battlefield.

The conflict began with political rivalries that had been developing in Europe for decades.

Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia competed for territory, resources, colonial influence and military power. Germany’s growing industrial and naval strength challenged Britain’s international position, while France remained determined to recover territory lost to Germany in 1871. Austria-Hungary feared nationalist movements threatening its multinational empire, and Russia sought greater influence in southeastern Europe.

Military alliances increased the danger that a confrontation between two countries could involve several others. Governments expanded their armies, developed plans for rapid mobilization and increasingly treated military strength as essential to their international standing.

The immediate crisis began on June 28, 1914, when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb nationalist.

Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, used the assassination to confront Serbia. Russia mobilized in support of Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia and France, and German forces invaded neutral Belgium as part of an offensive against France.

The alliances helped spread the conflict, but the assassination alone did not make a world war inevitable. Governments made successive decisions to escalate a regional confrontation into a war that would eventually extend across much of the world.

Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, following the invasion of Belgium.

Britain had treaty obligations concerning Belgian neutrality, but its decision also reflected broader strategic interests. British governments had long sought to prevent a rival power from dominating continental Europe, particularly one capable of threatening Britain’s naval strength, commercial position and imperial interests.

Canada entered the war because Britain did.

Although Canada had exercised substantial control over its domestic affairs since Confederation, Britain retained authority over the Dominion’s foreign relations and declarations of war. The British declaration automatically placed Canada at war with Germany, without a separate Canadian decision to enter the conflict.

Prime Minister Robert Borden’s government nevertheless determined how extensively Canada would participate. It authorized an overseas expeditionary force and committed the country’s financial resources, industries and manpower to the war.

In Lambton County, those demands began with recruitment.

The local militia institutions established during the Fenian emergency of 1866 had continued developing through the following decades. The 27th Lambton Regiment, descended from the battalion known as the St. Clair Borderers, had its origins in the defence of communities along the St. Clair River.

By 1915, that military tradition was helping supply soldiers for a war taking place thousands of kilometres away.

The 70th Battalion, authorized in August 1915, recruited men from Lambton, Essex, Kent and Middlesex counties. Its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Irwin Towers, was a Sarnia barrister with connections to the local militia.

When the battalion departed from London, Ontario, in April 1916, hundreds of people from Sarnia and the surrounding region travelled to witness the farewell. Contemporary newspaper accounts described crowds lining the streets and families struggling through their final goodbyes.

The 149th Battalion followed, recruiting throughout Lambton County.

Recruiting officers worked from communities across the county, while public marches, patriotic speeches and newspaper appeals encouraged enlistment. In January 1916, approximately 120 recruits marched through Corunna, Courtright and Sombra, where residents welcomed them with meals and public demonstrations of support.

Research by Allan Miller, published through Lambton County Archives, identifies 1,067 men attested to the 149th over its existence, although only several hundred travelled to Britain with the battalion itself. Many others had already been transferred to other formations.

Neither the 70th nor the 149th entered the fighting as the complete local formation residents had watched depart.

Both were broken up after reaching Britain, their men assigned to reinforce other units. The 70th’s commander objected to the decision, but the military’s need for replacements took precedence over preserving the original battalions.

The First World War combined mass armies with industrial weapons capable of killing on an unprecedented scale. Artillery bombardments devastated defensive positions and the surrounding countryside, while machine guns, barbed wire and fortified trenches made infantry assaults extraordinarily dangerous.

Soldiers lived among mud, rats, lice and disease, often under continuous threat of shellfire. Poison gas damaged lungs and eyes, sometimes leaving survivors with permanent injuries. Even those who escaped physical wounds could carry the psychological effects of prolonged bombardment and repeated exposure to death.

At the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, Canadian soldiers experienced large-scale German chlorine-gas attacks while helping resist an offensive against Allied positions in Belgium. Thousands were killed, wounded or reported missing.

At the Somme in 1916, repeated assaults against fortified German positions produced enormous casualties for limited territorial gains. More than 24,000 Canadians became casualties during the campaign, including those killed, wounded and missing.

Men recruited in Lambton served with Canadian formations involved in the fighting, including the 18th Battalion.

Charles Oliver Fairbank of Petrolia, who had originally served with the 70th, left a diary and photographs documenting his experiences overseas. Among his photographs were officers wearing gas masks. Two of the men pictured were killed during the fighting at Courcelette in September 1916.

The losses sustained in battles such as the Somme explain why the Canadian military continually demanded replacements from battalions raised at home.

In April 1917, all four Canadian divisions fought together at Vimy Ridge, capturing a heavily defended German position at a cost of nearly 3,600 Canadian lives.

The victory became one of the most celebrated events in Canadian military history. Later generations frequently described it as the moment Canada became a nation, although the country’s political institutions had existed for half a century and its population remained deeply divided over imperial loyalty, military obligations and political rights.

Vimy demonstrated the growing effectiveness of Canadian military organization. Its later symbolic importance also reflected how Canadians chose to remember a war whose political and human consequences were far more complicated.

Later that year, Canadian troops fought at Passchendaele, where artillery had destroyed drainage systems and left the battlefield covered in deep mud and water-filled shell holes. More than 4,000 Canadians died during the campaign.

The fighting continued through 1918. During the final Allied offensives, known as Canada’s Hundred Days, Canadian forces helped break German defensive positions while suffering tens of thousands of additional casualties.

The final offensives were particularly costly for Sarnia. The Sarnia War Remembrance Project identifies at least 32 local men who died during Canada’s Hundred Days, a period frequently remembered for its military successes.

By the end of the conflict, approximately 620,000 people had served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, including about 424,000 overseas. Approximately 61,000 Canadians died during the war or its immediate aftermath, while many thousands more returned with lasting physical and psychological injuries.

Across the world, millions of soldiers and civilians died. Fighting, hunger, disease, displacement and the destruction of communities extended the war’s consequences far beyond the armies on the battlefield.

The same conflict that consumed reinforcements in Europe demanded enormous increases in industrial and agricultural production at home.

Sarnia had formally become a city only three months before Britain declared war. Its industries were already expanding, but military contracts accelerated that growth.

Mueller Brass, which opened its Sarnia plant in 1913 with just 22 employees, shifted into producing shell casings and other military components. By 1916, approximately 1,800 people worked at the plant across three shifts.

An appeal published in the Sarnia Canadian Observer in April 1918 described the company’s difficulty finding enough workers to meet military orders. Despite operating around the clock, Mueller was still seeking additional men and women for munitions production.

Elsewhere in Lambton, farmers faced a different labour shortage.

Governments urged increased agricultural production to supply Allied armies and civilian populations, even as recruiting campaigns removed young men from farms already struggling to find sufficient workers.

Women and younger workers assumed additional responsibilities in agriculture, manufacturing, nursing and charitable organizations. In Sarnia, the Women’s Conservation Committee collected recyclable materials to raise money for the Red Cross and the war effort, while other organizations supplied clothing, comforts and financial support for soldiers and their families.

Municipal government also became involved. During Mayor William R. Paul’s administration, Sarnia arranged life insurance for enlisted residents and provided financial allowances to wives, mothers and children of soldiers.

The war affected employment, household finances and the responsibilities residents were expected to assume. Those demands were not universally accepted.

Canada had initially relied on volunteers for overseas military service. As battlefield losses mounted, recruitment became increasingly difficult. By 1917, Borden’s government concluded that voluntary enlistment could no longer provide enough replacements and introduced the Military Service Act.

Conscription, or compulsory military service, provoked one of the country’s most serious political divisions.

Supporters argued that the Canadian army required reinforcements to continue fighting and that compulsory service would distribute military obligations more fairly. Opponents challenged the government’s authority to compel participation, particularly in a war whose purposes and enormous human costs remained contested.

Opposition was especially strong in Quebec, but it also included farmers, workers and other Canadians who believed the government was placing unreasonable demands on the population.

In rural Lambton, the conflict was immediate. The same government urging farmers to produce more food was preparing to take away the workers needed to grow it.

During the 1917 election campaign, Borden’s Union government had promised exemptions for farmers’ sons and experienced agricultural workers. Most of those exemptions were withdrawn in April 1918 as German offensives increased the demand for soldiers.

The consequences were recorded by the Duncan family, who farmed near Arkona.

On April 27, 1918, Russell Duncan wrote in his diary that his father had travelled to Petrolia for a mass meeting organized to petition Ottawa over the Military Service Act.

Only days later, Russell and his brother Walter received orders to report for military duty in London, Ontario. They underwent examinations, returned home on temporary leave and were called back before the end of May.

Their mother, Violet Duncan, continued the family diary after they departed. Her entries described the ordinary work of maintaining the household and farm, as well as the loneliness of having her sons away.

On June 11, she recorded that she had been attempting to clean upstairs but became so lonely that she returned downstairs. She turned to gardening, weeding onions and setting out plants.

The family’s experience demonstrated how compulsory service reached into homes far removed from the battlefield. Military authorities could order men into uniform, while the work and emotional burden left behind remained with their families.

The conscription crisis also exposed deeper divisions over citizenship and political authority.

Wartime electoral legislation extended voting rights to certain women connected to military service while removing them from some naturalized Canadians born in countries at war with Britain. In Quebec City, resistance to conscription erupted into violence in 1918, leaving four civilians dead after soldiers opened fire.

The federal government exercised sweeping powers under the War Measures Act, imposing censorship and restrictions on civil liberties. Thousands of residents classified as enemy aliens faced registration and surveillance, while more than 8,000 were interned across Canada.

Many of those detained were civilians from territories controlled by states fighting against Britain, rather than people convicted of hostile acts.

For Indigenous communities, military service took place alongside longstanding restrictions on political rights and continuing pressure on their lands.

A First World War honour roll associated with Aamjiwnaang First Nation records nine members of the community who served, including Fred Doxstater, Albert David, Elias James, Frank Jacobs, Arthur and Edwin Maness, Alex Naywog, J.F. Williams and Wellington Rodd.

Across Canada, more than 4,000 Indigenous people served during the war, although most Status First Nations people did not possess the ordinary federal voting rights available to other Canadians.

Indigenous communities also challenged conscription. First Nations leaders questioned why a government that denied their people ordinary voting rights should be able to compel them into military service. Their objections helped secure a federal exemption from compulsory combatant service in January 1918, although Status First Nations men could still be required to undertake certain non-combat duties in Canada.

Doxstater enlisted with the 149th Battalion in December 1915 and later served overseas with the Canadian Engineers.

He became seriously ill with tuberculosis and was returned to Canada for treatment. On November 11, 1918, while Sarnia celebrated the Armistice, his father received a telegram reporting that his son was dangerously ill in a Halifax military hospital.

Doxstater died four days later, aged 22, and was buried at home with military honours.

Indigenous veterans faced unequal treatment after returning home. Federal programs intended to help former soldiers establish farms and civilian livelihoods were administered in ways that disadvantaged many Status First Nations veterans, while Indigenous land continued to be made available for non-Indigenous settlement.

In Aamjiwnaang, the immediate postwar period brought another significant struggle over land.

According to historical material written by Aamjiwnaang historian David D. Plain and published by Aamjiwnaang First Nation, the City of Sarnia approached the community in 1919 seeking 1,184 acres of reserve land for a proposed steel plant.

Two surrender votes failed.

Aamjiwnaang’s account states that the city subsequently threatened to invoke the federal Oliver Act, which permitted expropriation of certain reserve lands near growing municipalities. A third vote approving the surrender passed under duress.

The land surrender was associated with Sarnia’s postwar industrial expansion, rather than an established direct consequence of the fighting in Europe. It nevertheless revealed how differently communities experienced the region’s economic transformation.

Indigenous soldiers had served overseas, but their military participation did not protect their communities from government pressure to surrender land at home.

For the wider population of Lambton County, November 11, 1918, brought an extraordinary public celebration.

News of the Armistice spread through the county. In Sarnia, factory whistles sounded, businesses closed and crowds filled the streets. Residents carried flags, gathered for religious services and travelled across the river to celebrate with people in Port Huron.

The following evening, a large torchlight procession drew participants from throughout Lambton, including Corunna, Courtright, Forest, Petrolia and Walpole Island.

In Watford, veterans of the Fenian Raids joined the Armistice celebrations, riding together on a hayrack among elaborately decorated automobiles.

More than half a century after local volunteers had mobilized to defend the Canadian border, the community was celebrating the end of a war that had carried its soldiers across the Atlantic.

Among those celebrating were veterans who had returned from Europe, some wounded, using crutches or permanently disabled. Other families mourned relatives who would never return, or continued waiting for news from overseas.

Demobilization brought soldiers home to an economy no longer sustained by the same military contracts. Veterans faced difficulties finding work, obtaining medical treatment and adjusting to civilian life. Families continued to live with injuries, illness, psychological trauma and the absence of those who had died.

The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 brought further illness and death to communities already affected by wartime losses.

Even the task of identifying the dead was not straightforward.

When Sarnia’s cenotaph was unveiled in Victoria Park on November 7, 1921, its original memorial tablet carried the names of 60 men who had died during the First World War.

Another 42 names were added in 1922 after it became apparent that men who had died had been inadvertently omitted from the original monument.

Those 102 names did not represent every person from Lambton County who died as a result of the war. Other communities maintained their own memorials, while later historical research identified additional people with Sarnia connections who were not included on the city’s monument.

The memorials recognized military service and preserved the names of those who had died. The effort to establish them also reflected the scale of loss and the difficulty communities faced in accounting for it.

Beyond Canada, the political settlement left much of the world unsettled.

The Treaty of Versailles and related agreements dismantled or reorganized major empires, redrew European borders and imposed territorial, military and financial obligations on defeated states. Former German and Ottoman territories were redistributed under arrangements that often continued imperial control rather than providing political independence to their inhabitants.

Canada gained greater international recognition, including a separate signature on the Treaty of Versailles and membership in the new League of Nations. Its military contribution strengthened demands for political autonomy from Britain, but divisions over conscription, wartime restrictions and unequal citizenship remained.

The settlement also left competing territorial claims, nationalist grievances and colonial interests unresolved. Those tensions would contribute to further conflicts in the decades that followed.

For Lambton County, the war’s legacy could be found in the soldiers scattered among distant fighting units, the factories and farms reorganized to sustain them, and the families who continued to live with the consequences.

Its dead were commemorated in monuments throughout the county, while surviving veterans returned to communities that had changed during their absence.

Yet even as crowds celebrated peace in Sarnia, Canadian troops were already serving in northern Russia.

The Armistice ended the fighting against Germany on the Western Front on November 11, 1918. Canada’s involvement in another overseas military intervention continued.

About this reporting

This article is part of The Sarnia Journal’s 11 Days of Remembrance series, examining military conflicts through the histories of people who lived in the region now known as Sarnia-Lambton.

Local recruitment, the 70th and 149th Battalions, military departures, wartime casualties and the Armistice celebrations are documented through contemporary newspaper accounts and historical research compiled by the Sarnia Historical Society’s War Remembrance Project and Lambton County Museums. Battalion enlistment and transfer figures draw on Allan Miller’s The 149th Canadian Expeditionary Force: Lambton’s Own, available through Lambton County Archives’ Virtual Books collection. Charles Oliver Fairbank’s photographs and wartime diary are documented in Lambton County Archives’ account of the donated collection.

Sarnia’s wartime industrial expansion is documented in Phil Egan’s research on Mueller Brass. The account of the Duncan family, local opposition to conscription and Watford’s Armistice celebrations draws on historian Greg Stott’s examination of contemporary newspaper reports and family diaries, published through Lambton County Archives.

The broader military and political history draws on the Canadian War Museum, Veterans Affairs Canada, Library and Archives Canada and historical research published by the Department of National Defence. National casualty figures distinguish deaths from the broader category of casualties, which includes wounded, missing and captured personnel. The Sarnia War Remembrance Project’s local figures and the city’s cenotaph records do not provide a complete count of those who died across Lambton County.

Aamjiwnaang participation is documented through the First World War honour roll and historical research into Frederick Doxstater’s service and death. The 1919 land surrender is described according to Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s published history, written by historian David D. Plain. The broader history of Indigenous conscription exemptions, land policies and veterans’ benefits draws on federal historical research.

The history of Sarnia’s cenotaph draws on the Sarnia Historical Society’s examination of its establishment and later changes. Canada’s military involvement in northern Russia at the time of the Armistice is documented in the official Canadian Army history of the First World War.