Those bells

The fireworks that lit up the Ottawa sky on July 1, 1867 flashed their magic for only a moment, then faded into oblivion. The gun-salute soldiers, Fathers of Confederation and revellers of every sort from that first Dominion Day — all long gone, of course, among the shadows of history.

Even the original House of Parliament, magnificent backdrop for the cannon blasts and regimental parades that thrilled thousands in the capital the day Canada came to be, was consumed by fire more than a century ago.

But one remarkable relic from the country’s inaugural birthday bash — a tangible link to the seminal seconds of our collective past — still vividly recalls that distant time. It is suspended four or five storeys above Sparks Street in the cathedral’s high stone tower: a quarter-ton bell that, exactly a century and a half ago today, did its patriotic duty.

An official notice printed in local newspapers spelled out Ottawa’s formal itinerary for the “Inauguration of the Dominion of Canada.” The great occasion would be “ushered in by the ringing of City Bells, Firing of Cannon and Bonfires,” read the proclamation, issued by order of city council’s “celebration committee.”

It was the pealing of church bells — in towns and cities all across the land — that first and foremost announced Canada’s birth on that summer Monday morning in 1867. Bells atop schools, civic halls and fire stations were said to have chimed in, too. But in the new country’s new capital, among the loudest heralds of the nation’s arrival would have been the hefty, handsome Englishmade bell of Christ Church.

It was cast in 1839 at Thomas Mears’ world-renowned Whitechapel Bell Foundry in east-end London. The foundry, coincidentally, closed this year — May 2017 — after an astounding 450 years in business, including 250 at the Whitechapel manufacturing site.

But one living legacy of the venerable foundry — the Christ Church bell that rang in Confederation — can still be heard just a few minutes before the cathedral’s weekly 10:30 a.m. Sunday service, among other times.

The old bell can still be seen, too — but only after some heartfelt pleading by a curious scribe, and the kind permission of church administrator Josephine Hall.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks, like a Sherpa acquainted with Everest’s perils.

Hall leads the climb up a steep, winding staircase to the gallery at the back of the church, from which can be seen a tiny attic portal. We scale a rickety wooden ladder and squeeze through the opening to a floor of thick, heavy planks that still lie some distance below our destination.

Another nerve-testing ascent up a long, shaky aluminum ladder takes us only to the base of the musty, dusty belfry. Hunched over for one more climb, this time up hand-hewn steps with a headroom hazard from the beams that house the bell, I am Quasimodo with a camera — and intensifying jitters.

Up here, in the dim light that angles into the tower through red vents really meant to let sound escape, the scary end of a very long rope is tethered to a great wooden wheel that controls the bell’s swinging. Far below, in the vestibule just inside the cathedral’s main doors, the rope’s other end has been fed through a hole in the ceiling and then coiled around the staircase handrail, waiting to be unwound for a church warden’s next spirited pulls.

Dear God, why did I just look down?

A braver soul would have climbed a bit more and actually touched history. But this last set of steps is the most precarious yet, not to mention the highest. There’s faith, and there’s foolishness. A digital eye with “megapixel” zoom will have to do. The quarry is captured.

The bell is a lustreless, gunmetal grey, a coat of dust adding to the matte finish. There’s a red band of tarnish visible on opposite sides of the inner bell where the rusted clapper makes contact for each ding and dong.

The faint outlines of the bellmaker’s mark are visible, but it takes some post-climb enlarging and filtering of a snapped image to decipher the faded inscription: THOMAS MEARS LONDON 1839.

Issues of the old Bytown Gazette trace the bell’s distant beginnings. “On Monday last, the Rev. S. S. Strong, the much respected Pastor of Christ’s Church, in this Town, left for England,” noted a June 1839 news item. “Mr. S. has kindly undertaken to procure an Organ and a Bell for the Church.”

Then, in October ’39: “Intelligence has been received in Town, that a first rate Bell, for Christ Church of this place, weighing 516 lbs. has been shipped by one of the most celebrated founders in England.”

Finally, in January 1840, it was reported that the “handsome bell” had “arrived safe” in Canada, awaiting only the spring thaw to reach Bytown by boat from Montreal. “It is from the foundry of Thomas Mears, London, and has all the appearance characteristic of their workmanship.”

Initially raised in the old Christ Church built in 1833, the bell was hanging there when it was rung on July 1, 1867. It was one of just a few objects rescued and reused when the original church was demolished in 1872 and the present, much larger building was erected at the same site a year later.

The church was declared a cathedral when the new Diocese of Ottawa was created in 1896.

There is another amazing fact about the bell that speaks to the great depth — and deep-seated Britishness — of the history that it represents. In 1840, evidently to celebrate the bell’s arrival from England and its subsequent installation, Christ Church choirmaster J.F. Lehmann composed a rousing melody for a popular patriotic poem by the British playwright J.E. Carpenter, who had proclaimed The Merry Bells of England to be “a Briton’s native music” — the “gladsome chime of olden time that spreadeth joy around.”

An original print of Lehmann’s composition is, in fact, the oldest known piece of sheet music in Canada, a treasured possession of the national archive. It’s also a sign of the powerful hold that ties to Britain had on both the early Anglican church and 19th century English-Canadian identity.