Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo and asking our readers to chime in with anything you can recall about the photo, other related memories, or even a funny caption. Have some vintage photos of your own? Send them to [email protected] and we may share them with our readers!
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In 1896 Elizabeth W. Morley, who came from Saint John, New Brunswick, bought land on Hanes Street to build a school—the Morley College, Conservatory of Music and School of Art. Morley taught music, French, mathematics, drawing, bookkeeping, and literature. The school was advertised as a ladies’ college but Morley also accepted male students and gave instruction in general education. In April 1899 the building burned to the ground and was never rebuilt. (Photo: Muskoka’ Digital Archives)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Last week we shared this photo taken during construction of Huntsville’s Town Hall in 1926:
Martha Briggs Watson shared this wonderful history with us:
Purchase and Installation of the Huntsville Town Hall Clock
My paternal grandfather, Edward Hugh John Briggs, emigrated from England in 1908, and was watchmaker and jeweller with the Harry Booth store in Huntsville, until he enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1916.
Upon returning to Huntsville in 1919, and being discharged from the army, he opened E.H. Briggs Jewellers (where Muskoka Jewellery Design is now, at 68 Main Street East).
1927 saw the completion of the Municipal Building (Town Hall) on Main Street. During its construction, the question of a clock to go into the tower came up. The Town Council had heard about a clock due to be removed from the old railway station in Toronto, slated for demolition, to be replaced by the new Union Station on Front Street.
My grandfather was asked to go to investigate the clock’s size and suitability for relocation. It would be quite an engineering job to modify the clock to fit the clock tower in Huntsville, but my grandfather decided it would be possible, and Mr. Charles Paget bought the Toronto station’s clock as a gift to the town of Huntsville.
Councillor Tom Millest, and George Ralston, the town’s engineer, accompanied by my grandfather Edward (Ted) Briggs travelled by train to Toronto, where Ted took charge of packing the clocks parts to bring carefully to Huntsville. He carried the more delicate parts home with him.
It was indeed quite an engineering job to install the clock in the new Town Hall tower. New dials, hands, connections, and mainly the motive power weights had to be done, and Ted used special tools for those purposes, with the help of his sons Harold (my father) and my Uncle Ted.
What is really interesting to me is that in getting the correct weight, assorted pieces from old car crankshafts etc, were used.
The clock was officially started at 11 a.m.on October 11, 1927, where the Briggs family maintained it and made sure it kept as close a time as it was possible to get in a tower clock at that time.
Mr. P.W. Ellis, the dean of jewellers, pronounced the work of installing this clock “A magnificent job!”
(This piece of writing is taken from various written accounts by my Uncle Rixon (younger brother of Harold and Ted Briggs, as well as my Uncle Ted’s wife, Hattie Briggs, and also my memories of the story told to me by my father Harold).
My Memories of the Town Hall Clock
Although I always knew the story of the purchase and installation of the clock, I regret that I didn’t question my dad more about the thoughts and feelings of the mayor, H. E. Rice, the town councillors, my grandfather, the Briggs family…as well as ALL the other people of the town, and the excitement that must have been in the air!!!(For that reason, I have written and continue to write MY memories and thought s and feelings about my experiences…so that some day, when they are interested, my sons can read this kind of stuff and not have the regrets that I do!!)
My Uncle Ted, watchmaker par excellence, made sure that the Town Hall clock kept meticulous time. For that reason, he walked from Briggs Jewellers, at 68 Main Street East, to the train station in the west end, to set his pocket watch at the official time. He in fact did this at the same time every day, so people en route would indeed set their clocks according to my Uncle Ted’s passing their shops or homes!
He and my Dad took turns changing the clock’s time from EST to EDT and back…the official time to do that is 2 a.m., and so that is when the Town Hall clock’s time was changed. On occasion, my dad would wake my up to take me with him. It was just magical for me to be able to climb the iron staircase up to the tower to see all the wheels, the pendulum, the weights, and all those metal bits and pieces tick-tocking away (especially in the middle of the night!).
Every time I look at that clock now, I am so grateful that it continues to run, second by second, and to Terry Smith, who maintains the clock now, as well as the Town of Huntsville for refurbishing the tower.
If that clock could only talk, and not just tock!
Thanks, Martha!
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we lived in dorset and my grandmother and I WOULD CATCH BOAT IN DORSET to Huntsville my grand mother woud bring a lunch and we would go up the stairs of the town hall to eat our lunch I remember we could get a pop up there that was in the late forties
Thanks, Martha! What a beautiful story and wonderful memories. Thank-you for sharing them.
Martha, Thank you for that wonderful story. One of my favourite things to do was to sit on those stairs and look out the windows onto the street. Lucky you to see the magic of the clock.
More stories, please.