Rare World War One Photos and Diary Transcription Donated to Lambton County Archives

Rare World War One photos and a copy of a Lambton major’s diary written overseas in 1916 are now part of the Lambton County Archives collection.

 

9A-G R.B. Barnes, C.O. Fairbank, Steenvoorde France, 24 Aug 1916

The items, now more than 100 years old, belonged to Major Charles Fairbank of Petrolia, who chronicled the trench warfare in Ypres and the Somme.

His grandson, Charlie Fairbank of Oil Springs, donated the diary and the photos, spurred by the Lambton At War exhibit now showing at the Judith & Norman Alix Gallery in Sarnia. This material caught the attention of staff at the Lambton Heritage Museum while they were conducting research to support this exhibit and a lecture series about the major's participation in the First World War.

“My family has kept the diaries and photos of my grandfather, C.O. Fairbank, a major of the 70^th Battalion and later joined the 18^th Battalion at Ypres and the Somme,” said Fairbank. “By donating these items to the Lambton County Archives, historians and the public will gain new insights into the shelling, the horror of the trenches, and my grandfather’s incredible sense of duty. At the age of 58, he volunteered to go overseas on this dangerous mission, leaving behind a wife and his four young sons.”

9ED-G 70th Battalion at Sunnyside, 1915

One of the photos being donated shows Maj. Fairbank with his new recruits of the 70^th Battalion at the west side of Fairbank’s mansion. It is believed this was taken in 1915.

Through some digging, the Fairbank archivist Colleen Inglis was able to piece together the story behind a series of three photos taken with Major Fairbank and five other officers. In one, they are in their regular uniforms, in another they wear their helmets and in a third, the same group are posed wearing their gas mask.

By transcribing Maj. Fairbank’s diary of 1916 to make it more accessible, she determined that the photos were taken on Aug. 24, 1916 in Steenvorde, France. The troops had been billeted and were all sleeping on hay in a barn. Tracking down a newspaper account of the photos in a Forest newspaper in 1916, she was able to identify who is in the photos.

9A-G R.B. Barnes, A.P. Ross, A.E. Cook, S.M. Loghrin, C.O. Fairbank, G.V. Nelson, Steenvoorde France, 24 Aug 1916

“Captured at a peaceful moment, the picture of the men in gas masks is simultaneously lighthearted and terrifying, and it brings the people to life in a way that words alone cannot,” says Inglis. She noted that two of the men, Major S.M. Loghrin and Lieutenant R.B. Barnes were killed less than a month later, on Sept. 15, in the Battle of Courcelette and Lieutenant G.V. Nelson was killed in 1917.

The detailed diary, she says, provide a very vivid insight and document the first time he saw an airplane as well as his first sighting of a tank                                                         

Major Fairbank, who was 58 when he went overseas, returned to his family in 1916 and continued to live in the Fairbank mansion in Petrolia until his death in 1925. Earlier, he was the mayor of Petrolia, and the county warden. He was also a medical doctor, owned Vaughn and Fairbank bank as well as VanTuyl and Fairbank Hardware and was an active oil producer.

“These pictures are a unique and fascinating snapshot of history,” says Lambton County Archivist Dana Thorne. “They tell an important local story by featuring a prominent Lambton citizen, Charles Oliver Fairbank, but they also tell an important international story by situating him in France in the middle of the First World War.

“We are grateful that the Fairbank family is willing to donate this material to the Lambton County Archives, where it can be studied and appreciated by generations of researchers. We are also grateful that events such as the Lambton At War exhibit, on display at the JNAAG until February 4, help bring this type of material to the surface where it can be discussed and appreciated.”

9A-G G.V. Nelson, R.B. Barnes, A.P. Ross, A.E. Cook, S.M. Loghrin, C.O. Fairbank, Steenvoorde France, 24 Aug 1916

9A-G R.B. Barnes, A.P. Ross, A.E. Cook, S.M. Loghrin, C.O. Fairbank, G.V. Nelson, Helmets, Steenvoorde France, 24 Aug 1916

Special thank you to Pat McGee for writing this blog post!

Sisters Finish Telling Family Story The Observer Started Sixty Years Ago

The Lambton County Archives are home to a collection of 50,000 photo negatives from the Sarnia Observer which depict local news worthy events from the 1950's and 1960's. Every summer, a post-secondary student is hired to work on digitizing this significant collection. In 2017, we hired Journalism Major Julie Mutis to work with the Sarnia Observer Negative Collection. While scanning negatives, Julie's imagination was captured by a photograph of a young family arriving in Sarnia in the late 1950's. Wanting to uncover more details about this family, Julie took the initiative to make contact with the sisters from the picture. Silvia and Marian were kind enough to travel to the Lambton County Archives and share their experiences with Julie, sitting down to talk with her about  their emigration to Canada and sharing about their life here. Below is Julie's article, published here on the Lambton County Archives blog as a Guest Blogger. Thank you, Julie!

  

Photograph of the Haler family in June 1957.
Joseph, Maria, and daughters Silvia and Marian.
From the Lambton County Archives Sarnia Observer Negative Collection.

This photo of the Haler family, Joseph, Maria and their two daughters Silvia and Marian, appeared in the Sarnia Observer on July 25^th 1957. An interview with Joseph about the family's escape from communist Yugoslavia accompanied the photograph. The family was happy to have finally arrived at their destination but uncertain about what was in store for them here in Canada. Sixty years later, Joseph and Maria's daughters Silvia Freer and Marian Strangway are able to finish telling their family's story.

In 1957 Slovenia was a part of Yugoslavia, a communist country ruled by Joseph Tito. In the 1957 interview, Mr. Haler spoke about Tito saying he only maintained control of the country through a strong military and police presence. Though Silvia and Marian were very young when they lived in Slovenia (8 and 6 respectively), they remember the climate of fear that prompted their emigration to Canada. "With the communists, nothing was for sure and if you didn't do exactly as they say, they would kill you," said Marian.

Joseph Haler, who worked as a police officer for most of his career in Slovenia, knew the dangers of going against the government's agenda first hand. "When my dad's life was threatened I guess that was when the decision was made that we had to get out of there," said Marian. In 1957 a man came to the Haler's house and warned Joseph that the military was planning to kill him. Marian and Silvia were not told the exact reason behind this threat but said that they were always told it had something to do with Joseph's actions during the Second World War.

Joseph left the country first and arranged for his family to follow him soon after. Silvia and Marian recall having to climb mountains along the "Iron Curtain," the guarded border between communist and democratic Europe, to meet the professional border crosser Joseph had hired to take his family into Austria. Although the two remember being nervous about crossing the border, they were not entirely aware of the situation they were in. "We were kids we didn’t have to clue what was going on," said Silvia.

After crossing without incident, save the loss of one of Marian's shoes, the family headed to a bus station and traveled to Maria's sister's home in Austria. "We were told to keep our mouths shut and not say a word while we were on the bus and from there on it was party time for us," said Marian.

The Halers stayed with Maria's sister in Germany and then at a refugee camp where the sisters attended school while their parents organized the details of their trip to Canada. The Halers left a port in Trieste, Italy on what the sisters describe as a very nice, luxury Italian ship. "Not that we were staying in the luxury section," added Silvia.

The journey took around two weeks. "I know it was at least two weeks because we had fish on Fridays and the fish was not good," recalled Silvia. The boat arrived in Montreal on Marian's seventh birthday and after clearing customs, the Halers got on a train headed to Sarnia.

Although the family was happy to arrive in Sarnia, getting here was only half the battle. "Everything was new. We couldn’t even speak the language," said Marian.  The sisters said that their new neighbours made adjusting to life in Canada much easier. "I guess we've been really lucky we have always had good neighbors and good friends and everyone was always trying to help." Silvia and Marian said their next door neighbours would even give them rides to school so they didn’t have to make the long walk.

The sisters attended St. Peters where their peers were very eager to help them learn English. "We picked up the language quickly," said Marian. "Dirty words really quick," added Silvia demonstrating a habit the sisters have of finishing each other's thoughts. They said the kids at school would teach them swear words which they would repeat at home, excited to show their parents what they were learning. "Of course our dad picked them up too and started to use them," said Silvia. It was Joseph's friends who finally told him what kind of words his daughters were bringing home from school.

Marian and Silvia said that learning English was harder for their parents than it was for them but with the help of friends and co-workers, they too learned quickly. Both Joseph and Maria quickly found employment upon arriving in Sarnia. A friend of Maria's got her a job in the laundry department at the hospital. She soon transferred to housekeeping where she became a supervisor. Joseph had had a carpentry apprenticeship in Slovenia and continued that career in Sarnia.

Marian Strangway (L) and Silvia Freer (R).
Photo by Julie Mutis, July 2017.

Both Silvia and Marian graduated from SCITS and went on to relocate multiple times in Canada and the U.S. Both are now retired and spend their time volunteering for their respective communities of Port Huron and Sarnia.

Leaving their home and family in Slovenia was not ideal for Maria and Joseph but they did have the chance to go back. "It took a long time before anyone would go back because everything was so unsettled out there," said Marian. The Halers became involved with the Slovenian club in Lobo and connected with other people who had been forced to flee their homes.

Silvia and Marian said that their father would often talk proudly about how he arrived in Canada with less than a dollar in his pocket. Despite this and all of the other uncertainties that the Halers faced when the Observer article was written, Marian said that "Before we knew it," "it just all fell into place," finished Silvia.

Big thanks to Pat Forbes, the Observer staff reporter who wrote about the Haler family in 1957.

Written by Guest Blogger Julie Mutis.

The original newspaper article, published in the 
Sarnia Observer, July 25, 1957, p. 13

Sarnia Observer, July 25, 1957, p. 26

Lambton County Archives Capital Project - New Shelving Units

The Lambton County Archives is thrilled to announce that we are undergoing a major capital project this year. Our collections storage area has been filled to capacity for several years now. Our collection continues to grow as we accept new donations, and it has become increasingly difficult to find room for new material.

With the installation of a mobile shelving unit in our collections storage area, we will more than double our current capacity. We will also be able to reconfigure our collections on the new shelves in ways that are more intuitive than the current configurations.

Another major advantage of this project is the fact that we can reclaim our secondary storage space. Currently, we have 46 filing cabinets storing thousands of land instruments in a small secondary space called the Land Records Room. Many of these land instruments are over 150 years old. Currently, the land instruments are not in our primary, climate controlled collections storage area. They are also stored in aging filing cabinets that are not tall enough to accommodate all of the instruments, and some suffer damage as the cabinets open and close. By removing the land instruments from these cabinets and putting them into 375 custom ordered boxes, we can eliminate any future damage to this important collection. The new mobile shelving units will permit us enough space to accommodate these 375 boxes in the climate controlled area. We will be able to reclaim the secondary storage space as a cataloguing and conservation area where we will have the room to process archival material.

The estimated duration of the renovation project is May 15, 2017 - June 23, 2017. During this time period, we will not be able to access our collections storage area to retrieval archival material. Our facility will remain open to the public during regular operating hours throughout the renovation (Monday to Friday 9am-5pm; Tuesday and Thursday evenings 6pm-9pm; and Saturday afternoons 12pm-5pm). We will still have the capacity to assist researchers because we will retain access to the reference books in our reading room, our microfilm collection, and all online services. However, without access to the archival collection some of our resources will be limited, and we will not have access to our photograph or negative collections.

This project is made possible in part by the Government of Canada. We were successful in applying for a grant through the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund. The other key contributor for this project is the County of Lambton.

The upgrading of our collections storage capacity was identified as a priority in our 2014 Strategic Plan, and we are pleased to be implementing this major improvement. Moving forward, the Lambton County Archives will be in an event better position to safeguard the documentary history of Lambton County.