By John Rhodes
Special to The Chatham Voice
In the June 25 issue of the Chatham Voice, I told you about the substantial contribution of Rufus Strephenson to the progress and well-being of Chatham.
In this issue, I would like to tell you about his son, Sydney Stephenson; I think him to be every bit as important as his father.
Syd was born at Chatham in 1857, and in the late 1870s he took control of the Tri-Weekly Planet newspaper from his father. Under his guidance, it became a daily in the early 1890s.
Syd believed in plebiscited bonusing where local taxpayers could vote bonuses and tax relief for firms willing to build factories in Chatham and create jobs here.
Syd did not always win these battles, but the majority of them he did and Chatham taxpayers and workers were to benefit from his efforts time and again.
The Dowsley Spring and Axle Company (Ontario Steel Products), IHC, Union Gas, Dominion Sugar (C&D Sugar) and three different railways all received bonus concessions championed by Syd Stephenson and his newspaper, and even today there are Chatham people working at jobs that he helped create more than 100 years ago.
In 1913 his newspaper building, dating from the 1860s, burned down, killing two of his employees. He rebuilt the structure and it still stands having been through a total restoration a few years ago.
Syd sold the Chatham Daily Planet newspaper to the Chatham Daily News in 1923 but retained the printing department in the basement of his building, the upper floors of which became a furniture retail store initially known as Planet Furniture, and later known as London Furniture.
I am not sure of his opinion on the issue, but he was once voted to be the handsomest man in Chatham.
Sydney, the oldest of nine children, died in Chatham in 1948 and reposes in the family plot in Maple Leaf Cemetery.
I think him to be, rightly so, one of the most important people in Chatham history.
