'Glorious' bells pealing again at Trinity Church in Saint John

After two years of silence, the bells at Trinity Anglican Church rang out in uptown Saint John recently.

Hearing the bells ring on Friday morning was an emotional experience, said Jennifer Waldschutz, with the Chiming and Timing into the Future campaign, organized by the church.

"It's such a big deal … just the glorious return to our ears and the neighborhood and the community," she said on Information Morning Saint John.

"They have played for hundreds and hundreds of years and have always kept the time, and it's very comforting and helps the community know they're not alone." 

The campaign, now in its third stage of restoring the historic bells, has nearly raised its goal of $250,000.  

Waldschutz said work to restore the church bells is not over and the campaign will run for another three months. 

The bells chime to indicate indicate the hour, the half hour and quarter past, but 'with a little further more fundraising, by December we'll be ready to play the full hymns, joyous peals, funeral tolls … the entire capacity the bells could and should be doing," she said.       

Rev. Steven Scribner, the priest in charge at Trinity, said the current building was reconstructed after the Great Fire of 1877, and the bells were added in 1882 and were first rung on Christmas morning of that year. 

The bells used to be operated by levers, which were replaced with an electronic system in the mid-1960s.

"That electronic system started to fail in the last decade, and we silenced them two years ago because there were failures in the electronic system and the parts were obsolete," said Scribner. 

He said there has been other construction happening within the bell tower over the last couple of years, so it made sense to leave them silent while that work was underway. 

"We got together as a parish with the great interest of restoring the 1882 bells back to their former glory and a committee was struck," said Scribner. 

Information Morning - Saint John8:58Trinity Anglican Church bells ring again

For decades, centuries in fact, the bells at Trinity Anglican Church were the soundtrack of life in uptown Saint John. They were silent for two years, but last Friday, they rang out once more. We hear from some people who helped bring them back.

Waldschutz, a lifelong attendee of Trinity Church and a resident of Germain Street, said this restoration has meant a lot to her. 

"I'm a person who would go by the bells for the time. I don't wear a watch, so it helps me to know when to get up and get ready for work and if I had to rush or not," she said.

"My mother used to play the bells … for 30 years … hymns before church to call for the service, and she always had great fun playing for people's weddings." 

In the last year, the campaign has brought in enough funds to invest in a new clock system that is managed by a GPS receiver, "that looks at three satellites, communicating to a modem and that modem keeps the clock on actual time," he said. 

Scribner said the Trinity Church clock was one of three in the city, next to St. Luke's Anglican Church and the former St. George's Church. 

He said Trinity has received feedback from its congregation about the importance of the clock. 

"The clock and the bells are instrumental in making sure Trinity stands tall on this peninsula for the next generation." 

The bells will sound at intervals from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. — and not around the clock as they used to do. Scribner said they want to be respectful to the neighbourhood. 

While the campaign will continue collecting donations until December, the last fundraising event will be an auction on Oct. 24.