Toronto’s most famous bells have been saved by the bureaucrats.
Pressed by Mayor Rob Ford’s administration to cut costs, city officials had entertained the thought of disconnecting Old City Hall’s 111-year-old mechanical clock-and-bells system. They would have replaced it with a cheaper but unromantic alternative: an electric clock mechanism and a speaker system that would have blasted a recording of bell sounds.
Ford himself came out against the idea, saying he liked the real bells. The city decided in the summer to keep them ringing.
The company it hired to maintain the clock and bells until 2016, Scotiabell, will also develop “a long-term maintenance plan based on heritage preservation principles and traditional methods,” said city spokesperson Kazia Fraser.
Heritage Toronto executive director Karen Carter lauded the decision. “We’ve always glad when we’re talking to someone in the press about something being preserved instead of taken away, especially in this era of cost-cutting,” she said.
The bells sounded for the first time during on Dec. 31, 1900. The huge main bell rings heavily every hour, the two smaller bells more softly on the quarter-hour.
The clock mechanism was produced in 1900 by a top British manufacturer. Unusually large, and of unusually high quality, it features an accuracy-improving remontoire that is one of only four of its kind in the world.
The city has typically spent about $50,000 per year to maintain the system. The new contract is for $37,000 per year.
David and Phil Abernethy, a father-son horologist team profiled by the Star in March, had done almost all of the maintenance in the two decades since they fixed the clock after it froze in 1992.
“Obviously we didn’t meet their expectations in terms of cost. We respect their decision and are confident that the city will receive value for their money,” Phil Abernethy said.
Mechanical clocks worldwide have been converted to electric power. How long can Toronto’s signature clock keep on ticking?
“It was designed to do this work forever,” David Abernethy said in March. “And if it’s kept up in good condition, the clock will go for another century, without question.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/cityhallpolitics/article/1101557--toronto-city-hall-bells-saved-by-the-bureaucrats?bn=1
