The Matchcover Storyteller

The way things worked out, the story of Bill Forsyth has more of Eddie Sargent.   I have this 60-year old 20-strike matchcover from Bill’s political campaign; leading me to people I knew or knew of.

So I start with Owen Sound businessman and entrepreneur Eddie Sargent’s first foray into politics in 1948, seeking the Liberal nomination in Grey North provincial riding.  He lost to Mac Phillips, who served from 1945 to 1963.  Sargent went on to become mayor of Owen Sound the same year, replacing our William Forsyth.  Phillips (whose one-time home I lived in for 38 years!) became Ontario Minister of Health in 1950; an Owen Sound hospital was named for him and today, a wing of Owen Sound’s hospital.

Mac Phillips did not contest the September 1963 provincial election, and in fact had died that June.  Sargent ran again for the Liberals and defeated the “new” PC Candidate, Bill Forsyth by just 31 votes.  Sargent would remain a popular, sometimes eccentric but accomplished local representative for 25 years.  There is little more information about Forsyth other than that he ran in this one failed provincial campaign.