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Hard oilers foreign exploits featured in virtual exhibit

The story of Hard Oilers opening up the oil fields of the world is about to hit the worldwide web.

The Oil Museum of Canada has received a $35,000 grant to the federal Virtual Museum of Canada Investment Program to produce a virtual exhibit called The Untold Story of Canada’s International Oil Drillers: The Canadians are Coming!

The virtual exhibit, which is also funded by Fairbank Oil Properties and Lambton County, will use new research and cutting edge technologies to explore the story of how Lambton County oil drillers introduced drilling technology around the world, according to Laurie Webb, the supervisor curator of museums in Lambton County.

After the oil boom in Oil Springs and Petrolia slowed, the men who opened up the oil fields went abroad looking for new places to work. Their trips to places like Australia, Italy, Egypt, Borneo, Africa, Russia, India and what is now Iraq became legends as the Hard Oilers wrote home telling of their exploits.

“There are some amazing stories,” says Webb. The Oil Museum literally has a whole basement of items from the trips abroad, she adds.

“It’s an important story that is not well known and is one of the things we’d like to make people more aware of.

“They went everywhere and there are pretty amazing tales that they came back with and some of them didn’t come back,” says Webb. “One of the dynamics people don’t think about is the difficulty of traveling in the 1800s.”

Webb says the exhibit will only be online. “The Virtual Museum of Canada has been funding these types of programs for quite a few years,” she says. “It’s becoming more and more common…It is just to make exhibits more accessible to people who can’t come into the museum.”

It will take months for local museum staff, volunteers from heritage committees in Petrolia and Oil Springs and workers from the Virtual Museum to put the exhibit together and it becomes available on the Internet.

Webb isn’t worried using the internet to spread the historic information will reduce traffic at the local museum. “This is just help to get the story out the door,” says Webb. “It may do the opposite – it may make people want to come to the Oil Museum to find out more.

“We’re going to be able to expose a lot more people to the stories … and if we can bring the museum, all the better.”

– Heather Wright

Senior football returns to LCCVI

LCCVI will field both a senior and junior football team in the 2013 season.

Last year, the Petrolia high school could only field a junior team because there were simply not enough seniors to form a team.

But Rick Tremblay, coach of the junior Lancers, says this year the seniors will field an eight-man team in a rearranged league.

“The seniors are in two leagues; St. Pat’s (Sarnia) and Northern (Sarnia) will play a 12-man game with Strathroy (Holy Cross),” says Tremblay. “There is a five-team, eight-man league with Strathroy, Blenheim, St. Clair (Sarnia), SCITs (Sarnia) and LCCVI.”

Tremblay says it is a good solution to the shortage of players at the senior level. “For that group of kids, we didn’t get a lot of kids out to participate,” he says. “The late bus hasn’t run for five years, kids from Alvinston and Brigden…don’t come out because there is not a late bus.”

The downside of the new system, he says, is the Lambton County championship could be played between two teams who aren’t from Lambton.

But Tremblay believes LCCVI has a good shot this year. “It’s a wide open league,” says Tremblay. “When you take Northern and St. Pat’s out of the league, all those games are going to be winnable games.

“It’s a lot more balanced league.”

Meantime, Tremblay is looking for the Lancers to be competitive against the likely frontrunners in the junior league, Northern and St. Pat’s. “They’re going to be the two favourites,” he says. “Northern has won the championship a number of years in a row and then St. Pat’s will be strong because they’re going to have two schools combined.” (St. Christopher students joined St. Pat’s this year.)

Tremblay is hoping for a strong start saying there are a number of returning, Grade 10 juniors but adds some of the team is playing for the first year. “For some of these kids, it’s putting the equipment on and knowing the proper stance first,” says Tremblay. “We have a lot of Grade 10s, so we may be a bit more advance but it will take time.

The Jr. Lancers take on St. Clair in their first game Sept. 26 in Sarnia. The first home game is against St. Pat’s Oct. 3.

– Heather Wright

Liability concerns, uncertain ridership sink Petrolia to Sarnia bus

There won’t be a bus service from Petrolia to Sarnia after all.

The town was investigating setting up bus to Sarnia for Petrolia and other central Lambton communities, mostly for classes at Lambton College. The service would also have been available others in the community without transportation who had appointments in Sarnia.

Mayor John McCharles says the town considered putting as much as $13,000 up for seed money to start the service. Town officials had spoken with their counterparts in Plympton-Wyoming who were also willing to give seed money for the venture.

“The costs don’t see to be quite extreme,” he says. “It would be about $200 per day which is about $5 per person if we had 40 people.”

But McCharles told council Monday there was no guarantee there would be 40 riders. “That’s possible, but it is very difficult to really plan on that because we have not had that number of people come forward,” he says.

Several members of council voiced concerns about ridership. “We have people who are willing to use it but it is time restrictive,” says Councilor Tim Brown noting the bus would have to leave Petrolia and Sarnia at a set time, such as 7 am and 5 pm. “A college student who is done at noon, they’re not going to want to use it.”

Councilor Joel Field says several people have said their children might use the service but he hasn’t heard from anyone would leave Petrolia at 7 am and come back at 5 pm for a medical appointment.

And while ridership is a worry, McCharles says liability is a greater concern. “For the municipality to put forward seed money would be a bit of a danger. We would be liable for anything that would happen regarding the bus service,” says the mayor. “It may not be the town’s fault…but certainly, if someone was injured, the first plan of attack would be the municipality.”

And while the town will step away from the idea, McCharles says another group, perhaps a service club, might consider taking on a project to provide bus services to Sarnia for college age students.

“It is a bit disappointing because there are a number of people who would use it,” says McCharles. “But I don’t see it as a viable operation as far as the municipality is concerned.”

– Heather Wright

Flooding on Fairweather Road likely to persist even with new bridge

Fairweather Road will remain for fair weather drivers.

It’s an area which is prone to flooding. In the spring, public works crews leave the flooded road sign by the side of the road for the season knowing that there will be at least a dozen instances when the road will be under water.

Enniskillen Township has to repair the bridge on the gravel road between Rokeby Line and Shiloh Road and as it was pricing the job, staff considered whether replacing the culvert and adding another one might stop flooding in the low lying area.

Ray Dobbin, who provides drainage services for Enniskillen Township, says adding a second culvert to the project would boost the cost from about  $62,000 to nearly $100,000. And he said there were no guarantees the move would make the road flood free.

“It is still going to flood every year…instead of 11 days we might have eight days,” Dobbin told council.

“So it is just the question on whether $25,000 or $30,000 is going to make any difference (because) we don’t know how many days  of flooding it is going to cut,” says Mayor Kevin Marriott.

And there would likely be further delays if the project were expanded. Clerk Duncan McTavish says adding an extra culvert in the area would change the flow rates and the township would likely have to prepare a study for the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority on downstream flow rates if it were to move ahead.

“And they you are still left with the point of overflowing  on the road,” says McTavish.

Council decided to move ahead with the original repairs. “I’m not sure if that road warrants that kind of money,” says Councilor Mary Lynne McCallum. “It’s not that high traffic of a road.”

– Heather Wright

 

 

 

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