[Bell Historians] A Taylor bell in western Canada

[Ken Webb]

The article mentions Vernon as the original location.

Ken


On Sat, 28 Feb 2026, 07:12 Chris Pickford via Bell-historians, <
bell-historians at lists.ringingworld.co.uk> wrote:

> Here’s the text (i.e. without the copyright photos)
>
>
>
> Headline: Old church bell will peal back time
>
>
>
> By Ron Seymour
>
> The Kelowna Courier
>
>
>
> An old church bell now hanging in a downtown Kelowna garage will resound
> in a new South Pandosy urban plaza.
>
> The 850 lb. brass bell, cast in England in 1912, has been in the care of
> 75-year-old twin brothers Clinton and Orison Wood since St. Paul’s United
> Church on Lakeshore Road was demolished more than a decade ago.
>
> “It's connected to our front door by an electric clapper, and we've been
> using it as a doorbell all these years,” Clinton said with a laugh during a
> Thursday interview. “Even though it's in the garage, the bell is very loud,
> so anyone who rings our front door gets quite a shaking up.”
>
> The Wood brothers are glad the bell is destined to return to the property
> where St. Paul’s stood for 55 years before being demolished in 2015. Local
> developer Shane Worman plans to erect the bell in the middle of an urban
> public square in a commercial redevelopment approved for the property this
> week by city council.
>
> “That bell means a lot to our family,” Orison Wood said. “I always think
> of our father when it rings. But it sounds like a good idea to get it back
> where a lot of people can enjoy it again.”
>
> Trustees of Central Okanagan United Church, which owns the bell, have
> approved its transfer to Worman. “We’re delighted that Shane wants to do
> this. It’s such a lovely plan, bringing the bell back to where it belongs,”
> church trustee Beryl Itani said.
>
> The bell was cast by the John Taylor Bell Foundry in Loughborough,
> England. The still-in-business company, established in 1839, is described
> on its website as the last remaining bell foundry in the United Kingdom.
>
> Builders of the Dominion Post Office in Vernon placed an order for the
> bell and it was on top of that building until its demolition in the
> mid-‘50s. The Wood brothers’ father, Ernest Orison Wood, arranged through
> friends in the construction industry to have the bell shipped to Kelowna
> for St. Paul’s United Church, which opened in 1958.
>
> But when the bell arrived, church leaders didn’t have the money to build a
> proper bell tower. So the bell sat, half-forgotten on a wooden pallet
> behind the church for almost 20 years while an electronic bell was used on
> Sundays to summon parishioners.
>
> Its neglect, unsurprisingly, rankled Ernest Wood. “He didn’t like that the
> church board just kept tabling the issue, hemming and hawing, but there
> wasn’t much he could do about it,” Clinton Wood said.
>
> Ernest Orison Wood died in 1976, at age 90, never having seen the bell put
> into service at the church. After his death, his widow Jessie spearheaded a
> fundraising campaign to construct a large frame and headstock. In 1980, the
> bell was finally hoisted to a place of prominence near the church’s front
> door.
>
> But it was still a silent bell. It wasn't rung for another 19 years.
>
> The original clapper had long since been lost. And it wasn't until a
> church member, Adriaan Boek, went to Holland and found a suitable clapper
> that the bell finally gonged for the first time in Kelowna, in 1999.
>
> A headline at the time in The Kelowna Courier said: ‘Bell rings for
> Jessie’.
>
> From 1990 to 2014, the bell rang on the hour throughout the week, heard
> throughout a large part of the South Pandosy neighborhood. It was not only
> a community landmark; it served as something of a headstone, as the Wood
> family buried Ernest’s ashes at its base.
>
> The church was demolished in 2015 to make way for an ill-fated commercial
> and resdential project planned by the congregation. Before the wrecking
> ball was summoned, however, the Wood brothers got a jackhammer, cut through
> the bell tower’s concrete base, and brought their father’s ashes home for
> safekeeping.
>
> After the church's demolition, the congregation's ambitious redevelopment
> plan fell apart with soaring costs, and the land was sold for $5.5 million.
>
> "We were all sad when we left the building for the last time, we shed some
> tears," Clinton Wood says. "And then when the whole plan collapsed it was
> really a devastating thing. A lot of people were really angry and left the
> church, but we didn't. You don't throw away your church because of an
> unfortunate circumstance that didn't work out."
>
> Local builder Shane Worman bought the former St. Paul’s site a few years
> ago and won final approval this week for a project consisting of three
> buildings arrayed around an urban plaza open to the public. The development
> has less density than would have been possible on the site, and
> considerably more trees and landscaping than required - features that
> prompted Coun. Luke Stack to describe the project as “perfect” during
> Monday’s council meeting.
>
> The Wood brothers, who both now devoutly attend Central Okanagan United
> Church in downtown Kelowna, are pleased with the bell's pending relocation
> back to the South Pandosy neighborhood.
>
> And they think their father will be too.
>
> “I know this for sure,” Clinton Wood said, “Dad will be watching from the
> other side.”
>
>
>
> I haven’t had time to identify this particular bell in the Taylor records
> (1912) yet, but around that time Taylors supplied numerous clock bells –
> mostly about 7 cwt - for public buildings in Canada through clockmakers
> Smith of Derby who were contracted to supply the clocks. This must be one
> of them, but it’s not indexed as “Kelowna”.
>
>
>
> *Chris Pickford*
>
> Knighton (Powys), UK
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