Alexander Mackenzie & Family

John and another brother, Charles, registered as gun makers with the federal government. Brother Adam Stewart Mackenzie was a blacksmith and druggist. Hope Fleming Mackenzie (1820-1866) was a carpenter and cabinetmaker who came to Sarnia to build ships. Several pieces of furniture that he built are now part of Lambton County’s museum’s collection. Hope was elected to Sarnia Council and became Sarnia’s second Mayor in 1857 and was elected to the House of Commons in 1859. The eldest Mackenzie brother, Robert (1818-1896) followed in the footsteps of Hope. Robert became Sarnia’s sixth mayor, serving from 1864 to 1866.

By far the most celebrated of the Mackenzie brothers, however, was Alexander. He was born on January 28, 1822, at Logierait in Perthshire, Scotland, the third of ten brothers altogether. Alexander Mackenzie, Canada’s first Liberal prime minister and newspaper editor, had every reason to sympathize with the common man. He had been forced to cut short his formal education at the age of 13 to help support the family. Throughout his life, he embraced self-education, studying literature, history, science, philosophy and politics. While still in Scotland, Mackenzie was attracted to the reform movement and his passion remained unchanged after emigrating to Canada. Mackenzie went to work in Canada as a stonemason, and one of his first jobs was to build a stone arch at Fort Henry in Kingston. Other notable projects included the Welland Canal, the Episcopal Church and bank in Sarnia, along with courthouses and jails in Chatham and Sandwich.

Historians have portrayed Mackenzie as a staid and practical man with temperance leanings, but one insight into his younger days paints a different picture. While spending a winter cutting stone on Wolfe Island, Mackenzie crossed the ice every Saturday night to visit his future wife, Helen Neil, then living in Kingston. One night, Mackenzie arrived soaking wet and half-frozen. But even an unexpected plunge into frigid waters wasn’t enough to stop him from making the visits for the rest of the winter. After their marriage in 1845, the Mackenzies had three children. In 1852, Mackenzie’s beloved Helen died. The same year he found an outlet for his liberal political convictions as editor of The Lambton Shield. In 1853, Mackenzie married Jane Sym, but no children resulted from that union. Mackenzie served as Lambton’s M.P. from 1861 to 1882. He was also elected a member of the Ontario legislature in 1861, and for six months served as acting premier and treasurer of Ontario. Mackenzie became leader of the new Liberal party in 1873, the same year the Liberals revealed evidence of bribery involving the Conservative party and the contractors engaged in building the government’s Pacific Railway. The scandal which erupted forced Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and his Conservatives to resign, and the Liberals, under Mackenzie, took over. A general election the following year gave him the mandate to govern. He served in that capacity for five years (1983-1878) before the tables turned and Macdonald was reinstated, remarking that Canadians preferred “John A. drunk to Mackenzie sober.”

The Honourable AlexanderMackenzie died in 1892 but wasn’t officially recognized in Sarnia until a monument was created on the waterfront in 1968. In 1994, a plaque was unveiled at his gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery, Today, the first Monday in August is recognized as Mackenzie Day.