Petrolia-London-Stratford

(written by Keith)

You know you’re having a good holiday when you need to bring out the duct tape!  It’s just about time to say good bye to my day pack, purchased in 2005 in Vietnam for $4. It has seen duty in South East Asia, China & went around the world. Well it finally tore and fortunately duct tape to the rescue…. there’s still a few more miles in it.

Petrolia, ON  is where my Great, Great Uncle Frederick Fitzgerald along with 16 others formed Imperial Oil and he served as the 1^st president. Canada was only 13 years old when Imperial Oil was founded in 1846.


He also invented the Fitzpatrick Rig used to pump 60 oil wells at one time!

Frederick built a beautiful home in Petrolia.  Sharen and I found the house, knocked on the door and were very lucky to have the owner show us around. She is going to try to have it declared a Heritage

Home.

It had several stained glass windows.

One upstairs was called "lady in the window". It depicted a beautiful lady in the center of the stained glass. Unfortunately it’s not known if she was a member of the family. 

A coincidence of sorts happened while researching the Fitzgerald name. Jacob Englehart, the founder of Englehart where Sharen comes from,  was the 1^st vice president of Imperial Oil. He is originally from Petrolia!

Seems strange that Frederick & Jacob were friends and co-workers, then 167 years later Sharen and I show up from opposite ends of the country to discover this relationship.  Six degrees of separation seems a lot closer now.




In Petrolia the hospital is named Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital!  It was once the family home and upon Charlotte's death was bequeathed to the city of Petrolia along with Imperial Oil stock to start and sustain the operation of a hospital.  On the family grounds they also had a 9 hole golf course!!!


There is even an Englehart Park.

From Petrolia were drove to London to see Sharen’s cousins Garry & Sue, Lee and his daughter Nikki. We spent a very enjoyable evening chatting and visiting.  Sue & Garry have been to NFLD and gave us some tips for our trip there. They are also related to the Sharen’s cousins that we will meet in NFLD.



From here we went up to Birr to see the Anglican Trinity cemetery to look for Keith's relatives William & Joseph Young buried in the late 1800’s. We managed to find Joseph but not William. The Trinity Anglican church that served the community for 100 years was torn down. So of the many small communities in Ontario are losing their churches from lack of participation.

We have been on the road for 40 days now and I’ve done some calculations. We’ve travelled 7500 kms, used 442 liters of gas and that averages out to be $9.72 a day for gas…. not too shabby. That’s approximately a 100 gallons about the same amount it takes to fill up my brothers RV.  I figured we would travel about 22000 kms on this holiday so we’re about 1/3 of the way, still lots to see and do. No sign of any Newfy’s yet!

Stopped in Stratford to visit Keith's relatives Mary (93), her daughter Brenda and her granddaughter. Really enjoyed our visit.

  

   

     

        

The next morning we left for Guelph with a promise to return in a couple of days when Wayne, Brenda's husband returns from fishing with a supply of pickerel and a promised fish fry.                                                                       

 

We spent a day looking around Stratford, it’s a very pretty town with lots of parks, old buildings and scenic walks along the river.  

It was too bad that Wayne was not able to be in Stratford when we came back, but it was sure nice of him to leave us with a great feed of pickerel. Thanks Wayne.