The St. Mary’s Crousetown Organ

By Garth MacPhee

Garth has a long association with Saint George’s Round Church, having served as Director of Music from 1997-2000. In 2011 he returned to St George’s after a 10 year sojourn in Victoria, BC and Montreal, Que.

Nestled in the jewel box that is St Mary’s Church, Crousetown is the oldest tracker action organ in Eastern Canada. Though to all appearances it looks to have been there since the church was built in 1914, it predates the building by nearly one hundred years.

The organ, originally located in a church in nearby Liverpool and later, the village of Western Head, was jettisoned in favour of an electronic organ. In the fall of 1962, life-long parishioner of the Crousetown church, Nellie Snyder, then a nurse working at the Liverpool hospital, learned of the orphaned instrument, and shortly thereafter, it was purchased for the sum of $100, paid for by Fr Crouse as a gift to St Mary’s. Twenty years later, it was carefully restored by an 18-yr old David Storey in his parents’ cottage in the summer of 1981, along with organ builder Lynn Dobson, from Baltimore.

Built by James Wilson, London UK in 1823, the 217-pipe organ has 1 manual with 4 stops. Its tone is sweet and clear, so long as the bellows are expertly pumped, either by the organist with his left leg at a jaunty, if rather uncomfortable angle, or by a kindly disposed assistant operating a second lever on the side of the instrument. I can speak personally of the curious experience of playing, say a piece by Buxtehude, at one tempo, whilst pumping at a separate, unrelated speed. As David notes in a Facebook post on the organ, ‘The way this little organ speaks is so amazing. You hear sounds that people heard almost 200 years ago when the ambient soundscape was very different from the background noise we put up with today’.

Thus, it remains in use to this day, both in services and occasional concerts. In the days when Fr Crouse was the organist, he wryly boasted of having ‘the largest collection of Buxtehude organ works in Crousetown’. Indeed, Fr Crouse had a passion for baroque music, especially that of Buxtehude. In the summer of 1963, the first Crousetown Baroque Concert was held in St Mary’s, a tradition that carried on for nearly 50 years.

Longtime friend of Robert, Janet Ross was 16 when she first participated in a Crousetown concert, not long after they began. Over many years, Janet recalls with affection the meals he provided for performers in his nearby home: delicious homemade soup, salads culled from his marvellous gardens, a refreshing punch. Tallis’s Canon was sung in three parts as a Grace before the repast. Then they’d walk over to the church for the concert, which always concluded with the hymn, Ein’ fest burg, sung by all. Then everyone repaired back to his home for refreshments, contributed by parishioners. Janet remembers that some performers would camp overnight on the property, and in the morning be greeted with fresh coffee and leftovers from the night before. He then went off to church, leaving his guests to pack up and go home. Sweet memories to last a lifetime!

As a postscript, David Storey continues to care for the organ whenever he returns to Nova Scotia. Parishioner Jan House spoke warmly of David’s stewardship of the instrument, and what a blessing it is.

This summer we hope to have an old fashioned Crousetown concert, where you can see and hear this tracker action organ and sing Ein feste Burg.