The long story of a bell tower - Keith Roulston editorial

As well as Shawn’s story on last week’s front page announcing the 50th season of the Blyth Festival, I also received the Festival’s newsletter announcing the season. That newsletter featured its symbol for the anniversary season, a line drawing of today’s Memorial Hall.

 

But that’s not the same Blyth Community Memorial Hall that was featured on the poster of the first Blyth Festival in 1975. 
Memorial Hall is the proud accomplishment of the Blyth community as a memorial to the war dead and those from the community who served during World War I. The project was headed up by the Blyth Women’s Institute (WI) and other community groups and Blyth and the surrounding townships, as well as community members by the hundreds, raised money to build the magnificent tribute. A huge crowd that overflowed the upstairs and basement of the hall and filled the lawn, celebrated the opening of the building.

 

Through the early years, the building was kept busy with concerts and other activities, but by the 1970s, most of the activity (aside from the Legion’s annual Remembrance Day service) was concentrated in the lower community hall, where the WI and the Senior Citizens met, while the Blyth Lions Club held  meetings and bingos there. In addition, people gathered for wedding receptions (there was no community hall in the old Blyth arena of the time).

 

In the early summer of 1972, the Blyth Fair Board approached Helen Gowing, head of the Blyth Board of Trade, about holding the Queen of the Fair competition. The Canadian National Exhibition had just announced it was going to name a provincial Queen and asked each fair board to send a participant.

 

It was suggested to Mrs. Gowing that the upstairs theatre of Memorial Hall would be a wonderful location, if it was cleaned up. She led a crew of volunteers including Evalena Webster, Melda McElroy, Lloyd Tasker (all long lost to our community) and many more, to tackle cleaning up and repainting the theatre.

 

That same summer, Paul Thompson, then head of Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto but originally from Atwood, brought a group of his actors to the Clinton area to research and create The Farm Show. I met him and wrangled an invitation to the preview performance for neighbours in August in an old barn west of Clinton. Impressed with the show, I told Paul about the work we were doing in Memorial Hall and what a wonderful theatre it was.

 

Meanwhile, as work continued and dreams of future activity at Memorial Hall grew, Blyth Fire Chief Irvine Bowes declared that if the theatre was going to be used for more than this one event, it needed a fire escape. The enthusiastic redecorators hadn’t raised that amount of money (a whole $3,500!). 

 

Meanwhile Paul Thompson arrived to look at the building. I remember taking him down the street, with his shaggy beard and wild hair ­ - in the days when most men were clean-shaven - and merchants watching from their front windows to see the weird sight.

 

Village Council (30 years before amalgamation), debated putting more money into a (mostly) unused building. They worried about the electrical wiring (it was old, installed early in the century, but judged safe by Ontario Hydro). One by one, reasons to delay arose and were dealt with. Then, one of the councillors said he’d been looking at Memorial Hall’s roof for years and he didn’t like how it sagged. An engineer was hired and determined the roof was of faulty design. A tender to replace the roof was much higher than expected.

 

Eventually, an estimate was received that was lower, but council was cautious, so then community groups like the Legion supported the expense. Council went ahead and the new roof had a simple (affordable) bell tower, not the expensive old tower.
But, by then, Paul Thompson had found a new summer home for Theatre Passe Muraille at the Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia in 1974. But in March, 1975, with the new roof firmly established, I received a letter from James Roy about wanting to start his own theatre. He was (I didn’t know then) from Clinton and he, too, had been at the preview of The Farm Show in that barn.

 

James came up with plans to start a theatre that summer and we did. He chose a season headed by local author Harry J. Boyle’s Mostly in Clover, backed up by Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. When Mostly In Clover easily outdrew The Mousetrap, James’s dream of starting a theatre for Canadian stories was assured.

 

Along the way, Memorial Hall was expanded with a northern addition (1980), the huge southern addition (1990) featuring the Blyth Festival’s art gallery and, most recently, the community contributed millions in a project that restored the building to its century-old glory, including a copy of the original bell tower.