Petrolia
©
Petrolia

Petrolia

Ontario oil town with Victorian streetscapes, early wells, and museums tracing Canada's petroleum history

Petrolia is the birthplace of Canada's oil industry. In 1858, James Miller Williams struck oil nearby, and within a few years the town was booming. The wealth that flowed from those early wells built the grand Victorian streetscape that still lines Petrolia Line today — ornate brick buildings with elaborate cornices and stone trim, most of them designated heritage structures. A slow drive through town is like flipping through a catalogue of late-nineteenth-century architectural ambition.

Petrolia Discovery and the Oil Museum of Canada just south of town tell the story of the drillers who went from here to develop oil fields around the world — from Borneo to Persia. Victoria Hall, the town's 1889 opera house, has been beautifully restored and still hosts performances. The surrounding countryside is flat Lambton County farmland, dotted with the nodding heads of old pump jacks that still draw oil from shallow wells drilled over a century ago — including those still operating at the Fairbank Oil Fields.

Guide

Getting There

Petrolia sits about 30km southeast of Sarnia and 100km west of London, Ontario. There's no passenger rail service; the nearest train stations are in Sarnia and London.

By car, it's a short drive off Highway 402 (the Sarnia–London route), which makes Petrolia an easy stop on a longer trip. Most visitors come from Toronto (about 3 hours), London (1 hour), or as a day trip from Sarnia (30 minutes).

Guide

Things to Do

Petrolia is a half-day destination: walk Petrolia Line for the Victorian buildings, visit the oil museum, and catch a show at Victoria Hall if you can time it. The surrounding farmland still hides the working pumpjacks of the original 19th-century oil fields, many of them on Crown-protected sites.