My Youth, pretty boring

Though born in London, ON, I was raised in Simcoe, Ontario. My childhood home was located on Talbot street, a couple of blocks north of the Fairgrounds. It was a large, rambling house, with a huge attic and basement to explore. There were gardens all around the house, as well as a large vegetable garden (my mother was a farmer's daughter).

I went to South Public School, which was recently knocked down and replaced by townhouses. It was a fun neighbourhood to explore, with the fairgrounds, a railway switching yard, the Coop grain elevators all nearby to explore. A short walk south, along the railway tracks and I was in the countryside, where I collected toads from some irrigation ponds. If I got lucky, I caught a Garter snake, very necessary for terrorizing girls.

We kept rafts at Sutton's pond on the Lynn river. There were turtles in Sutton pond, but they were very difficult to catch, because they were very wary and skitterish. The turtles would sun themselves on a log, teasing us. We'd would slowly stalk them, but at the last minute the turtles would plop onto the water and scuddle away underwater. Occasionally I'd catch one, at the price of soaking my clothes (Sutton Pond was nearly a swamp; just downstream of the Simcoe Sewage plant), a small price to pay for such a wonderful pet...

I was a voracious reader, and excaped into my own world of books, reading eclectively. I had a huge book vocabulary, which I couldn't pronounce properly. And yet, I was a poor speller; I could see it was spelt wrong, but couldn't fix it. It was just the way my brain was wired. I didn't read phonetically, but captured words and phrases whole; I'd probably be good reading Chinese.

A clerk at the public library tried to kick me out of the adult section. When I protested, I was deferred to the head librarian, who demanded to know what I was reading. I said everything. To the horror of the clerk, and against the rules, the head librarian said that if that was what I wanted to read, I could do what I wanted (Adult books had a different connotation back then...).

At about age 13, and into high school, I became obsessed with electronics and read everything about it. (I was bad for magnificent obsessions...). I visited all the local TV-Radio repair shops in town, and collected defective, abandoned old radios. At home I salvaged the radios for electronic parts, and built electronic projects that usually didn't work. My next obsession was pipe organs.

The photo is me, 17 years old, with the 9 rank Karn-Warren (1919) pipe organ I installed in my unfortunate parents' home. It happened without consent, when they where foolish enough to take a vacation and leave me home alone. I baught it for $100 from a closing church in London, Ontario. I brought I home in pieces, on a roof rack of my parent's car! I took backroads to avoid attracting the interest of the police.

As a teenager, I studied organ performance with Dr William Murphy, Brantford; Lancing MacDowell, London, and Douglas Bodle, Toronto. I also studied musical theory, harmony, counterpoint, analysis and history. I learned choral direction and organ performance at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Journeyman, learning the trade

I started in 1973 with the Keates Organ Co., Acton, Ontario, where I learned the basics of chest construction, wiring and installation. I became their main tuning and service man.

In 1975 I was at Jacques Stinkens in Zeist, Holland, to learn the trade of organ pipemaking. By 1976 I was in West Germany studing the art of reed voicing at Carl Giesecke and Sohn's voicing machine. While in Europe I traveled extensively, examining the modern and historic European organbuilding, especially north Germany, Holland and France.

Joining the New England organbuilder, C. B. Fisk, Gloucester, Ma, in 1977, I worked as a pipemaker and draftsman. While in the Boston, MA area, I studied the organs of E.M. Skinner and G. Donald Harrison of (Aeoline-)Skinner.By 1979 I was running the pipeshop of the renowned tracker builder, Fritz Noack in Georgetown, Ma.

In 1981 I returned to Canada to work for Gerhard Brunzema of Fergus, Ontario, as a draftsman, voicer and organbuilder. Brunzema was a master at scaling and voicing, experiance that proved very valuable to me. Concurrently with Brunzema (and later, full time) I was an adult student at the University of Guelph studing computer science, philosophy, ancient/classical history and economics/business.

In the 1990's, I made several trips to England to study British organbuilding, especially the work of Father Willis and William Hill. I also visited the workshops and organs of modern builders like Mander, Harrison & Harrison and Willis.

Organbuilder, in own shop.

When I was in high school, I'd already knew I wanted to be an organ builder. I was an organist, but my personality was not an artist or musician; I was a mechanic. I loved taking things apart, and there is no greater mechanical marvel than a pipe organ. So in 1985, after a decade and a half working and learning with several excellent organbuilders in Canada, Europe and the USA, I returned to my hometown and started my workshop.

My plan was to build new mechanical (tracker) and electric action organs, to have my own woodworking shop to make the chests, consoles, keyboards, wood pipes; and a foundry to cast the metal and make metal pipes. Why make everything? Because for me, that was the fun part. There were others that called themselves organbuilders, who were really just kit assemblers, buying the components from supply houses.

Most businesses exist to make profits, but I didn't care about that. As long as my business generated enough money to pay the bills, I was happy. Money is necessary to survive and grow, and we did that; but my raison d'être was cutting dovetails and Soldering pipes.

New Organs, I'm the biggest donor...

Though I did submit proposals, I soon realized that I wasn't able to sell new tracker organs. Tracker organs are considered to be an expensive, premium product and people in the market for "the finest" weren't interested in buying from an unknown newcomer.

I could however, sell ordinary electric action pipe organs by underbidding. No church committee would ever be faulted for choosing the lowest bidder. The problem for me, was that there were several small builders within a couple of hour's drive of me, who were happy to sell a crappier organ for a even cheaper price.

I wanted the jobs so I underbid and got some. But to build an organ using good materials and workmanship is expensive. I wasn't willing to build the crappier organ, so I accepted a lost of about 10% on my first couple of organs. Of course this wasn't viable, so I stopped persuing new organs.

What we did? lots of work

Fortunately, there was plenty of work for us besides building new organs. I had a crew of four employees, growing to six in busier years. With skills and facilities to do real organbuilding, we kept busy rebuilding and restoring existing organs. We did a lot of releathering, made replacement parts, rebuild wornout parts and new and rebuilt consoles. We also continued to built the occasional new organ.

A big part of my business was tuning and maintanance. We cared for the organs of about one hundred churches, as far away as Perry Sound, Wiarton and Windsor. Though most tunings were within about 1-1/2 hours drive from home.

Ironically, a lot of our income came from services and materials sold to our competition.

Special Interests ...my hobbies.

I have some interesting hobbies: astronomy, cooking, electronics, vinyl records, books, rocks and fossils and woodworking. I talk about some of them here, on my website. For example: my Telescope.

My telescope is a 6", f12, refractor. It has an Astrophysics 2" focuser, Massive german polar mount, with a 12" Byers gear. It is ideal for planetary and lunar viewing. I had a friend who lived out on a farm, a very dark sire ideal for telescoping. He was also an avid astronomer, so I kept my telescope out there and visited to do my observing. Unfortunately, he retired and moved away, an my 'scope is too big to casually haul around.