The Belgian and Dutch population of Chatham Kent is a substantial one and has had a presence since the earliest days.

One of the more prominent pioneers of that ancestry was Daniel Ross Van Allen who founded the town of Dresden in the 1840s, was an early mayor of Chatham and converted a business known as the North Chatham Steam Saw Mill into a wagon making concern known as Chatham Manufacturing.

This business, then popularly called “The Wagon Works” later became an assembly plant for International Harvester trucks (1919) and they remained in Chatham until 2009.

Subsequent Belgian-Dutch migration to Chatham-Kent came in three waves with the catalyst being the establishment of the sugar beet industry in 1903 (Wallaceburg), and 1918 (Chatham), another wave in the 1920s and a post-Second World War wave in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Belgians and Dutch had experience with sugar beets and thoroughly knew and understood the crop and how to grow and process it.

Part of that 1920s era of arrivals was Victor........

© Sarnia Observer