Sarnia’s Market Square, later Victoria Park, now called Veterans Park, has been around since Canada’s Confederation in 1867. In 1869, a British-made Blomefield SBML 32-pounder 56-cwt cannon originally nicknamed “Long Tom”, was placed in the park.
The cannon was manufactured by Walker and Company of Rotherham, Yorkshire, England between 1787 and 1820. The cast iron, one-piece unit weighs slightly over 3 tons (56 cwt - Hundredweight), fired a 32-pound cannonball and required a crew of 6 to 14 men to fire it. "Blomefield" refers to Thomas Blomefield, England’s Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Brass Foundry in 1780. “Long Tom” was derived from the British forces after the Royal Gun-founder from 1584 until 1595 Thomas Johnson. During this time, warships – naval and privateer - usually had one or two long, heavy guns mounted on a swivel at the ship’s bow to act as a chase gun, with shorter, lighter guns along the broadside. In the days when guns were denoted by their range, the chase gun became the “Long Thomas”, after the Gun-founder.
Sarnia's “Long Tom” cannon came over from England to Canada for defence purposes during the time of the Fenian uprising. “Long Tom” would end up on the 288-ton steam powered British gunboat Prince Alfred, as part of the system of defence of the Great Lakes. When the Fenian threat subsided, the "Long Tom" cannon was moved off the boat, retired and stored in the Military Reserve base in Point Edward. In 1869, two years after the nation’s Confederation, the retired cannon, reportedly “reposed near Point Edward, partly covered by sand and underbrush” was purchased and brought to Sarnia, and placed in the west end of Sarnia’s Market Square Park (now Veterans Park) facing east.
From the moment the historic cannon was brought to Victoria Park (now Veterans Park) in Sarnia, it was nicknamed “Long Tom”. In the early 1940s, the federal government, as part of a nationwide scrap and metal drive during World War II, suggested that the “Long Tom” cannon in Victoria Park be smelted down for the war effort. In a concerted effort, local Sarnia residents fought back against the government, saying the cannon didn’t belong to Ottawa. The Sarnia Observer in a May 1942 article referred to the Victoria Park cannon as “Big Tom”, a name “conferred on it a half a century ago by the boys who played around and on it”. After that, local media continued to refer to the cannon as “Big Tom”, a name that seemed to stick.
Sometime between 1959 and 1961, the “new” (and current) Sarnia public library was being built while the old Sarnia Carnegie library was being demolished. To make way for the construction work, and after residing in the park for over 90 years, the cannon “Big Tom” was moved to the north end of Canatara Park in Sarnia. It would remain there until 2015, when a group of local voluunteers worked to return "Big Tom" to its rightful home in Veterans Park.
