Thresher Reunion 2024: 115-year-old steam engine to be featured

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Despite dating back to 1909, the feature steam engine for this year’s reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association has only been its current owner’s hands for about two years.

 

Geoff Scholes of Plympton-Wyoming in the Sarnia area is the proud owner of this year’s featured engine, a 1909 18-horsepower John Goodison engine. He was also very proud when he was told he’d have the honour of being the owner of the featured steam engine at this year’s reunion. When he showed the engine in Blyth at last year’s reunion, it was just the second time he’d shown the historic machine at a local steam show.

 

His John Goodison was just the 15th steam engine built in 1909, for a bit of historical context. He bought it when it came available via internet auction in 2022 and it came home to the Sarnia area in October of that year.

 

Scholes looks at it as repatriating the machine back to the Sarnia area where it was built all those years ago. The John Goodison Thresher Company was officially born with Goodison’s sole ownership in the late 1800s and his factory was eventually located on Mitton Street between Essex and Maria Streets in Sarnia.

 

Goodison, one in the same as the steam engine company, was born in Wicklow, Ireland and he came to Canada with his family in 1857. They settled near Toronto, but, as Goodison struck out on his own, he continued to move west, first operating a successful farm equipment business in Strathroy before moving to Sarnia in 1882.

 

There, he worked for the Sarnia Agricultural Implement Company, which fell upon tough times in the mid-1880s, leading Goodison and George H. Samis to buy the company, with Goodison securing sole ownership in the fall of 1889.

 

Since Scholes secured ownership of his very own John Goodison engine, he has shown it three times. Twice, last year and this year, he has shown it in Forest, Ontario at the Western Ontario Steam Threshers Association’s annual show, and at last year’s Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association reunion in Blyth. Returning to the Blyth show this September will be just his fourth show with the Goodison engine.

 

Scholes says he has always been interested in the farming equipment and machinery of the past. He was in automotive repair from 1976 to 1981 before moving into the world of farm equipment.

 

Around that time, he began attending the annual steam show in Brigden, Ontario, which is now known as the aforementioned Forest show. There, he met a man named Harley Searson, who reunion-goers in Blyth will know as being part of the association for decades, often heading up the steam engine portion of the annual show.

 

Searson, a long-time police officer in the Sarnia area who retired in 2005, passed away in 2019 after being involved in several steam associations for a number of years.

 

However, back then, Searson was involved with the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association in Blyth and had been working with its annual reunion for a number of years. The local show has always had somewhat of a foot in the Sarnia area, with many of its early supporters and volunteers hailing from that area and their descendants remaining involved to this day (Mike Searson now oversees the steam engines for the Blyth show all these years later).

 

Scholes began attending the Blyth reunions in the mid-1980s and hasn’t looked back. However, he had always attended as a patron. It wasn’t until 2022 when the opportunity to own his own steam engine presented itself that his participation in the reunion would change going forward.

 

The steam engine came to Scholes in good shape and in complete working order. Ahead of this year’s shows, he did some minor work on it, which he loves thanks to his years in farm equipment, and now it’s ready to hit the road once again.

 

He has a special place in his heart for the Blyth reunion after all of these years. He says the show remains one of the best he’s attended over the years, largely due to the organization of it all and the number of steam engines that are routinely shown at the reunion.

 

He plans on being at the reunion all weekend this year. This was not the case last year. He left just a few hours before the end of the action on Sunday, only to find out after the fact that his steam engine would be featured in 2024. A friend was tending to the machine and let him know. And yet, while he missed having his picture taken with the engine to celebrate this honour, he was still proud of the accomplishment, especially being relatively new to the world of showing off antiques at the shows.