THE STUFF OF HISTORY
Alberta artisans repurpose historical materials
More than a century ago, tonnes of coal rode their way out of the southern Alberta Galt mines on thin ribbons of steel. Long since abandoned, the British-built Canadian Pacific Railway tracks have found a new, and timeless, life in nearby Lethbridge.
The historic steel is being repurposed into one-of-a-kind timepieces.
“This steel was a piece of history, used to build an entire economy for a city,” says Steve Christensen, owner of Novo Watch, a high-end watch company in Lethbridge. “We thought, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we could turn it into something else?’”
This fall, he launched The Coalbanks - Dowlais 1884, a limitededition series of 15 watches. They retail for $3,250 apiece and are made locally from reclaimed steel sourced from the Galt No. 8 mine in southern Alberta.
While Christensen, has been in the watch business for six years, these are his first handmade ones and the first to celebrate an iconic part of early Canadian life — the railway and mining.
Many of his watches are made in China, where he can control the costs yet still bring his designs to life. (Those watches retail for about $200, depending on the chosen model.) But this past year, Christensen, 34, decided to make his newest watches here, in Canada.
“I was thinking, ‘ Wouldn’t it be cool if we handmade these things in Canada?” he says.
And, he thought, it would be even better if he could assemble the watches by hand and make each one from repurposed materials, materials with historical significance for Canadians.
With that in mind, he gained access to the railroad track from the Galt mine. It had been manufactured by Dowlais Ironworks in Great Britain in 1884 and shipped to Canada. But after the mine closed in 1957, the track sat abandoned until Christensen found a way to give it a new life.
It takes Christensen’s team — a blacksmith, machinist and leather worker — about four to six weeks to build each Coalbanks - Dowlais watch. It’s a six-step process, from sourcing and forging a section of 133-year-old steel, to machining, leatherworking and careful assembly. Each watch must be manually wound and comes with a two-year guarantee. The final step for each Dowlais 1884 is creating its unique packaging. Christensen’s crew hunts down old prairie buildings and repurposes the aging barnwood into custom boxes.
“Usually there’s a story behind a watch: People tell you, ‘I got this for graduation or when I retired, or whatever,’” Christensen says. The Coalbanks - Dowlais watches, he notes, add another level to the storytelling behind a timepiece.
And, down the road, Christensen plans to add more, all made from repurposed, historically significant steel. “This has been one of the most fun jobs ever,” he says. “We have so many ideas.”
The initial idea to create a watch company began ticking for Christensen in 2011, when he won some money at a summer job. He was already known for his vast watch collection, and his co-workers assumed he would spend the extra cash on a new timepiece for his collection.
“I wanted something new and different, but nothing really spoke to me,” he says. “And I thought, well, maybe I could make one.”