Women's Conservation Art Association left city a valuable gift

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Editor's Note: The Observer is publishing a series of stories called Sarnia: 100 and counting, documenting significant people, places and historic events that helped shaped the community in the lead-up to the city's 100th anniversary.

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The story of the multi-million-dollar collection of Canadian art housed in the public art gallery in downtown Sarnia began a century ago when a group of volunteers went to work recycling paper and rags for Sarnia-Lambton's war efforts.

The murder of the heir to the Austrian Empire that led to the First World War was just weeks away when Sarnia celebrated officially becoming a city on May 7, 1914.

But, by the time summer arrived that year, Canadian was at war with Germany.

In a talk to the Sarnia Art Association in 1972, former Sarnia children's librarian Sadie Knowles described life in the city during the war, and explained how the Women's Conservation Committee came to be.

Men and boys were signing up to fight the Kaiser in 1914, while women were making hospital supplies and taking jobs in munition factories.

"Everything was pushed aside in order to win the war and save our town," Knowles said.

Committees formed, including one that collected rags and scrap paper to sell to recyclers and raise money for the Red Cross.

The 30 or 40 women, along with five men involved in the effort, rented the basement of an old railway station as a warehouse and used horse-drawn wagons to collect bundles of rags and paper residents left on their boulevards.

Knowles said it was a smaller city then, ending at Exmouth Street to the north and Russell Street to the east, but one with a much more formal social life.

"Each street had a different visiting day when folks stayed home and served tea to their guests," Knowles said. "It was rather nice for newcomers."

Once the donations were collected, volunteers sorted them according to value of the different types of scrap paper.

"Silver paper from chocolate bars was most previous but, as bars were very scarce, it took ages to get a small ball," Knowles said.

"When we asked for people's letters, it caused quite a turmoil."

The work was hard, tiring and dirty but the committee raised $4,800 for the Red Cross by the war's end, Knowles said.

At that point, 10 of the women from the conservation committee, including Knowles, teamed up with Norman Gurd, a member of the Sarnia Library Board, to collect art for a public art gallery they hoped to see opened in their city some day.

It's first show in 1920 included paintings by Tom Thomson and future members of the Group of Seven.

Eventually renamed the Sarnia Women's Conservation Art Association, the women continued recycling paper and using the proceeds to buy and collect paintings, including work by the Group of Seven.

The Sarnia association members were fans and supporters of the ground-breaking artists before many Canadian art critics and collectors were.

"You today, cannot imagine the gratitude of the painters," Knowles said.

"The art critics in Toronto and Montreal were ridiculing these men and their works."

One of the treasures of the collection is a painting by Thomson, a contemporary of the Group of Seven, Knowles said the association paid $600 for in 1920.

In 1956, the three remaining members of the association donated their collection of approximately 25 pieces of Canadian art to the Sarnia library, where the collection continued to grow.

The publically-owned collection now numbers approximately 1,100 pieces housed at the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery at the corner of Lochiel and Christina streets.

As recently as 2007, gallery officials said its value had been estimated at more than $14 million.




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