Winnipeg’s civic clock turns 50

Winnipeg

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/09/2024 (391 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A civic clock has been part of Winnipeg’s skyline for most of the past 122 years. The current timepiece atop the Civic Centre’s Susan A. Thompson Building turns 50 later this month.

When Winnipeg’s “gingerbread” city hall was constructed in 1896, a clock was planned for its tower, but was cut as a cost-saving measure. In the 1902 civic budget, $2,500 was set aside to add one.

Andrew and Co. Jewellers in the McIntyre Block was contracted to install the Seth Thomas Co. built clock. Its four illuminated dials were two metres in diameter, the weights required to keep it in motion weighed around 450 kilograms, and it had to be wound by “a muscular man for 15 or 20 minutes” every week.

The clock was installed in May 1903 and after a test run lasting a couple of days, its pendulum was tied to one side so that Mayor John Arbuthnot could officially restart it on Victoria Day. Arbuthnot had a few words prepared for the dignitaries who joined him in the tower, but as the Free Press reported, “he had got no further with his speech than the word ‘gentlemen’ when the striking of the noon hour began.”

The clock had its share of starts and stops over the decades, but it remained in place until the old city hall was demolished in 1961. The mechanism was put into storage and reappeared in the Edmonton Court clock in Portage Place when it opened in 1987.

Winnipeg’s current Civic Centre was constructed between 1962 and 1964. The original drawings for the complex show no provision for a clock and it opened without one.

Molson Companies Ltd. scheduled its annual board meeting in Winnipeg during the city’s centennial year of 1974. Today, Molson is known as a brewer but in the 1970s it was a conglomerate made up of more than ten companies. Four of them, Molson Brewery Manitoba Ltd., Beaver Lumber, Willson Stationers, and Seaway-Midwest Ltd., were headquartered in Winnipeg and employed around 1,000 people.

What does one of Canada’s largest companies get its host to help celebrate its 100th birthday? In this case, it was a three-metre-tall, double- sided, illuminated clock built by Claude Neon.

Molson’s board and around 100 company executives held their meeting in the city council chambers on September 16, 1974. When it was done, everyone proceeded to the courtyard where the clock was unveiled and presented to Mayor Stephen Juba by Molson chairman Bud Willmot.

In recent years, the clock has shown signs of its age. Its mechanism failed in 2009, and the following February it was removed from its perch to undergo a nine-month, $26,000 refurbishment. It stopped working again in 2019 when its hands detached from the clock mechanism, but was soon repaired.

The clock appears to be working well today and is ready for its 50th anniversary!