Sonic Scheduling
Church Steeple Bell, ca. 1910–2003
Galt Museum & Archives, P20060021007
In many ways, our lives are sonically scheduled by various devices and mechanisms. Over the years, different sounds have told us what to do—whether it be the school bell of our younger years or the smartphone alarms of today.
One important sound scheduling device in our community for many years was the church bell located atop St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church. Located at the corner of 6 Avenue and 12 C Street North, this bell rang out for over 90 years, summoning parishioners to Sunday services. At the time of its founding, the surrounding neighbourhood was known as “Little Wigan” after the similarly-named coal mining town in England from where much of the congregation immigrated.
The coal mining connection ran deep at St. Mary Church, as many families in the congregation also worked at the No. 3 Mine in the river bottom. The St. Mary Church bell is purported to have originally come from the first locomotive used in the Lethbridge colliery.
Another sound that many Lethbridge residents will recall is the city’s curfew alarms. First instituted back in 1909, the curfew bell located on J. D. Higinbotham’s drug store rang out at 9 pm each night to call home all children under the age of 14 years old. When the curfew by-law was revised in 1947, the siren atop the No. 1 Fire Hall took over this duty.
Fire department clerk Albert Cheesman was the man at the controls for the curfew siren, which he operated for nearly two decades. In addition to the nightly curfew siren, it was also tested briefly each day at 11:45 am—a useful way for downtown workers to know it was time for a lunch break.
When the fire department moved out of No. 1 Fire Hall in 1973, the siren was silenced, but the curfew by-law remained in effect until 1998 when it was rescinded—almost 90 years after it was adopted in 1909. However, the sound of the curfew alarm still haunts the memories of many residents who grew up testing its boundaries!
Learn more about the important role sound plays in society by visiting our newest temporary exhibition, The Politics of Sound, on display until May 7, 2023 at the Galt Museum & Archives.
Dr. Frank Hamilton Mewburn was a wiry and fiery surgeon, politician, army officer, and university professor who greatly contributed to the development of Lethbridge. Mewburn came from a long ling of medical professionals, graduating from McGill University in Montreal in 1881.