Sarnia 27th Regiment Band

For the settlers of Lambton County, life each day was about simply surviving. But Britain demanded that all males between the ages of 16 to 60 be put on the militia roll. In all the British colonies, including Canada, June 4, King George III’s birthday, was a traditional militia training day and everyone on the militia muster roll was expected to turn out or be fined.

In 1866 Canada was organized into 18 military districts. Lambton county was responsible for the 27th Lambton Battalion of Infantry, called the St. Clair Borderers. The 27th regiment was not a standing army; they were volunteers who came out regularly to practice and train, and they had a good reputation.

Music was needed to add to the pageantry of parades and special events, and it was needed to add energy to marches. So musicians in Lambton county served as band players in the battalion. The band formed for the 27th regiment consisted of men from various Lambton communities, including musicians from the Sarnia Independent Band and the Forest Excelsior Band. They were paid to come out for a practice or to play at an event. Sometimes the entire Sarnia Independent Band or the Forest Excelsior Band served as the regiment band. The regiment band became known as the 27th Battery or Battalion Militia Band of Sarnia, or the Twenty Seventh Regiment Band. The Regimental bandmasters included A. Philips, Mr. O'Donnell, Francis Corrison, and Fred Starse.

The band also played at fun events. One of them in 1898 was the annual band excursion to Detroit (the city of the straits). Band members and passengers from all over Lambton County including Forest, Camlachie, Aberarder, and Alvinston, took the train to Sarnia to board the steamer, City of Toledo. Vocal and instrumental music was provided as the boat travelled to Detroit. The boat docked for about four hours there and then returned with more musical entertainment to Sarnia around 10 pm. (See Mona Huctwith. Forest: Its Beginnings and More. Forest: DanCam Press, 2000, p. 636.)

And the band played for many concerts in the park. In 1913, Sarnia paid the band $550 to play twenty park concerts.

In 1909, William E. Brush became the bandmaster of the Regiment Band. He grew up in Lambton County, born in Watford and then moving to Forest. He played cornet in Forest and then studied music in Toronto where he was a well-known euphonium soloist. He moved to Sarnia by request of Frank Holbrook, secretary-treasurer of Imperial Oil. (see Sarnia Observer, December 30, 1954.) In Sarnia, he played violin for Port Huron theatre orchestras. And he was the organist and choirmaster at Devine Street Methodist Church.

The Lambton regiment, starting in 1914 with the advent of world war I, sent recruits to serve with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The band played at the going-away St. George's church service for the volunteers sent overseas to Valcartier. The band headed the parade of sixty four regiment volunteers, the local company of the army medical corps, the Kiltie Band, and thirty boy scouts. They marched up Front Street from the armory and then over to the church. It was standing room only in the aisles and entries for this church service (see the August 15, 1981, Sarnia Observer). This band did not accompany troops that left Sarnia. They remained a Sarnia-based band and played at other military functions and at area military camps, such as in Goderich, London, and Cedar Springs.

See https://www.lambtonmuseums.ca/warwick_pages/st-clair-borderers/ and The Sarnia Canadian Observer, July 8, 1938, p. 6, and December 12, 1949, and August 15, 1981.

Note: this tradition of having bands and music affiliated with military camps and regiments continued. A more recent example would be Drum Sergeant Johnny Bond, regimental bandmaster for a drum and bugle corps of the Sarnia Regiment in the 1950's. See https://sarnia.civicweb.net/document/42245, p. 122.