Fairbank family donations give Lambton heritage a boost

Going through Fairbank family keepsakes has proven a boon for local history.

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Several items of historical interest have been donated after going through things Charlie Fairbank’s family, including his late parents and sister, had stored over the years, said Pat McGee, wife of the fourth-generation oil producer.

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“We had to empty a building at which we had things. . . (and) things were also stored at Van Tuyl and Fairbank Hardwarewhich closed in 2019,” she said.

“There were two attics there, and so there was a lot of stuff to sort, and we have been resourcing and trying to find good homes for a number of things.”

A pair of century-plus-old carriage boots that belonged to Fairbank’s grandmother were donated recently, along with others, to the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.

Enniskillen Township received a map from 1866, the year Petrolia was founded, and the Lambton County Archives received an 1880 map, including Petrolia, that was digitized, McGee said.

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“The Fairbank family has long had a sense of history,” she said, recalling how several in the family served in government and the military.

“I think they’ve always had a sense of preserving things,” she said, adding the task of going through items continuing.

The latest donation includes First World War uniforms worn by Fairbank’s grandfather.

Where exactly they were stored, isn’t clear, McGee said, noting one item donated is a thick, heavy and long wool great coat, with large brass buttons with beavers pictured in the middle.

A shorter winter jacket, an officer’s uniform with pants and three hats were also donated, all to the Lambton Heritage Museum, to complement another of Major Fairbank’s uniforms and his engraved flask already in the museum’s collection.

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Charlie Fairbank said he thinks his father donated those items years ago.

Charlie Fairbank is the third generation Charles Oliver Fairbank, McGee noted.

The donation, coupled with the earlier items, as well as archival material relating to the major’s First World War servicealso donated around 2017, give “a very clear picture of Fairbank’s military service during a crucial period of our history,” Lambton Heritage Museum curator and supervisor Dana Thorne said.

Fairbank was reeve of Lambton County in 1916 when he left, at age 58, to fight overseas, leaving his wife and four sons behind, McGee said, adding he felt compelled to have first-hand knowledge of the war.

Initially stationed in England, he transferred and from the trenches witnessed the Battle of the Somme where almost 25,000 soldiers from Canada and Newfoundland died, she said.

Fairbank returned home in November 1916, became Petrolia’s mayor in 1919, and died at the age of 66 in 1925, she said.

“My grandfather’s uniforms have become artifacts that tell the larger story of the incredible sacrifices Canadians made during this horrific war,” Charlie Fairbank said.

The Lambton Heritage Museum “seems like the right place for them,” McGee said.

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