New exhibits highlights the history of music in Lambton

In the time before social media, TV and even organized minor sports, everyone wanted to be in their local concert band, according to Petrolia’s Norm Sutherland.

He should know – he’s been a part of concert bands since he was a young boy. And he, and Don Vander Klok of the Lambton Concert Band, helped chronicle the history of the bands which played around the county starting in the 1890s.

Sutherland and Vander Klok found Alvinston, Inwood, Watford, Petrolia, Arkona, Thedford, Forest, Oil Springs, Walpole Island and Sarnia all had concert bands at one time. They were set up by former military people who had bands in the service.

In Petrolia, the Imperial Band was playing by 1896. Watford’s Silver Band had its first performance at the Watford Fair just one year later. It is not clear how long the Watford Band played on, however Petrolia had a succession of concert bands, some backed by the oil industry, which played all around Ontario until the 1960s.

One of the most successful was the Petrolia Citizen’s Band was renamed the White Rose Band in 1939. The group won first prize in Class B at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1940, 1941 and 1947 – a bragging point for the town. That’s despite the fact that 38 members of the band signed up to serve in the armed forces in the Second World War.
Sutherland joined right after that last big win at the CNE.

“I started music at the age of 10,” he says after being enthralled by a trombone at one of the Petrolia concerts. “I joined a junior band, which met on Tuesday nights – Percy Cox conductor – with 35 of us and after you got good enough, you would be promoted to the senior band,” he told The Independent as he gave a tour of the exhibit at the Sarnia Library.

“I got into the senior band in 1948. And that was the first year that I had the opportunity to go to the Canadian National exhibition.”

The band members were keen to do well, so drawing people to practice was not a problem.

“We practiced in the council chambers – the old council chambers. And we stored our equipment along the wall in big cupboards.

“We would give concerts in the summer every Saturday or Sunday night in the band stand that was removed in the middle of Victoria Park. And then in the wintertime, we would give concerts in the upstairs concert hall that we still have today,” Sutherland recalls.

The concert band was also a big part of community events including performing at the opening of Queen Elizabeth II Public School in 1953.

Sutherland credits bandmaster Percie Cox for much of the Petrolia concert band’s success during that time. Cox was hired by the Canadian Oil Company just to lead the band in 1939. He spent hours, Sutherland says, giving free music lessons to children who normally would not have been able to afford them.

Part of the history of bands in Lambton is the current Lambton Concert Band which started in Petrolia 20 years ago – with Sutherland leading the charge.

Until the pandemic, the Lambton band put on concerts about three or four times a year and Vander Klok says their glad to be able to start performing again this December.

When they do, he and Sutherland hope concertgoers will take a look at the exhibit next to the Sarnia Library Theatre where they perform to see some of the great early concert bands, their instruments and uniforms and to learn a little bit of the history the pair have uncovered.

“It’s just an important part of history and it gets forgotten about – something like this just helps bring it back,” says Sutherland.

The exhibit is on display until April.