The weekend of Saturday October 1st / Sunday October 2nd are shaping up to be THE major chiming event of 2005 in Ontario. On that weekend, chimers from Petrolia, Stratford and New York State will be converging on Brockville, Ontario, where Don Wright will be marking 25 years of chiming the 13-bell (and tubular bells at that - a real rarity!) chime at St. Peter's Anglican Church. This has developed into such a unique affair that St. Peter's is postponing its Thanksgiving Service to the following Sunday to free up that weekend. Rob Millikin, Chimer & Chimes Historian at St. George's, Oshawa, is working on arrangements for the chimers from the west of Brockville to visit a number of chimes along the way. Starting at St. George's, home to a 15-bell Whitechapel chime, the "Great Chime Crawl" will hopefully visit St. Paul's Presbyterian, Port Hope (11-bell Meneely & Co. chime), St. Peter's Anglican, Cobourg (10-bell Meneely & Co. chime), and possibly St. Andrew's Presbyterian, Kingston (9-bell Gillett & Johnston chime). St. Andrew's is in the midst of having major repair work done to their picturesque tower, so a visit there may or may not happen. The tee-off time is 9:00 in Oshawa, meeting at St. George's; arrival at St. Peter's Brockville is slated for about 3:30 pm. Brockville is also home to a second chime, a John Taylor & Sons 11-bell chime, installed in 1925. It is housed in the tower at Trinity Anglican.
The American Chime Force, being co-ordinated by Joe Connors (www.allchimes.com) is hoping to visit chimes in Utica, Rome, Sacketts Harbor, Watertown and Canton along the way. He has two companions at this point.
           And all are converging on Brockville. Don & Linda Wright have made arrangements with a restaurant in Brockville for dinner Saturday night. The main event will be a Service of Celebration at St. Peter's Sunday morning, with a lunch & fellowship to follow. Don has the chime booked from 2 pm on for playing, practice, tours, etc. on the Saturday.
            ITS NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN IN!!! Don (donlinwright@sympatico.ca) and Rob (millikin@ sympatico.ca) have a list of suggestions for accommodation in both Oshawa for the Friday night and Brockville for the Saturday night. This should be one wonderful weekend for chiming! Come and join us!
 

           Back in March, while visiting my daughter in Kingston, I dropped in to visit St. Andrew's, where a delightful 9-bell Gillett & Johnston chime and a G & J chiming tower clock reside in a very pretty stone tower. I was allowed to explore the tower, play the chime and have a look at the bells. It is a very nicely tuned chime, and is played from an Ellecombe Frame in a recently renovated chimestand room one level up. The tower clock is not running at the present, but appears complete and in good repair. In late July, I returned to find the tower shrouded with scaffold, and major stone-work repairs in progress. Here are a few pictures from March before the renovations started.

          In the April 2005 edition of the "Carillon News", John Gouwens mentioned in passing the benefits of using a "Dip Bar" to shorten the key fall depth of a carillon clavier. In pump-handle chimestand terms, I would take this to mean a mechanical device that could be utilized to push all of the handles part way down and hold them, thus shortening the distance that they now have to be depressed before the clapper strikes the bell. The benefits would be the same on a chimestand as on a clavier, to allow "very short key strokes and very quick, light playing", as John put it. What an easy project to try out on a Meneely & Co. chimestand! Think how fast those changes that you have been working on could be played!! The down side is lower sound volume (not necessarily a bad thing at times), and some loss of dynamic range - the louds and softs of the music. The upside is that it would be very easy to fabricate a dip bar that could be inserted when you need it, without having to drill holes in or alter the existing chimestand. Stay tuned: I'll be playing those changes in under two minutes yet!