A column by Blake Ellis

I have always been fascinated by history, so when I came across an interesting piece of information about the beginnings of Petrolia – or perhaps I should say Petrolea – I just had to look into it further.

It turns out Petrolia was founded on Christmas Day in 1866.

This was when the area we now know as Petrolia split from Enniskillen Township and officially became a village.

Petrolia didn’t become a town until 1874. It was this 1874 anniversary that was celebrated in 2024 with the 150th anniversary year long festivities.

Petrolia sprung into being in 1866 when a major oil well was discovered. By the end of the year, there were as many as 1,000 to 1,500 people in settlement.

It seems peculiar that the new municipality would have come into existence on December 25. It turns out the cause was simply bureaucratic.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were often used as end of the year deadlines for such things as township boundary changes, land transfers or business incorporations or dissolutions.

If this change hadn’t taken place then, it could not have existed as a municipality in 1867.

Christmas was a very different day in the mid 1800s than it is today. In those days, Christmas was seen as a religious day and not as a civic holiday. Many businesses still operated and the courts and offices were open.

It would not been uncommon for a money lender like Ebenezer Scrooge to be working on Christmas Day, as is depicted in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Choir.

In fact, documents would have been signed with very little fanfare. Most residents probably didn’t know anything of significance had even occurred until elections would have been held in early 1867 for a first village council.

The first reeve of Petrolia was George Moncrieff, who was only 25 at the time. He was born in Scotland but immigrated to Canada West, now known as Ontario with his family as a youth. He became a lawyer in 1864 and moved to Petrolia in 1866 drawn to the new community by the oil boom and its need for legal expertise for claims and contracts.

So, as we celebrate Christmas this year, we’re reminded of Petrolia’s beginnings as the municipality was born with a stroke of a pen.