Our Town: Remembering Calgary's tireless advocate of musical bells, John Nelson
Article content
Nobody within earshot of Mount Royal Conservatory on the first Saturday of January escaped at least a fleeting metaphysical visit from 17th-century poet John Donne. That afternoon, the university’s digital carillon—housed in the 18-metre-high Kerby Memorial Tower—rang out for 20 minutes. For whom did the bell toll? (Not incidentally, Donne would say it tolls for all of us.) It tolled for the very man who installed the tower’s bells some 46 years ago.
Bell-ringing as a form of musical entertainment is as old as Donne, but the practice only arrived in Western Canada in the 1960s. It wasn’t a musician who made it popular, but an irresistible salesman. For nearly 60 years, John Nelson—who died on Christmas Day at the age of 94—peddled handbells and carillons (those multi-belled instruments housed in belfries) for Schulmerich, North America’s oldest and largest manufacturer of the instruments. Every bell-swinging, cotton-gloved school and church choir from Manitoba to B.C. has the late Nelson to thank for introducing their institution to the practice and, in most cases, for keeping their bells in tip-top shape until he retired at the age of 89.
“My dad was never happier than in the summer when the school boards would give him all their handbells and ply him with coffee and doughnuts while he tinkered and repaired them, often with tools he’d invented,” says John Nelson Jr., an associate pastor of music in Regina. Indeed, Nelson was beloved at his home church, Calgary’s First Baptist, for, among other things, his devotion to expertly maintaining the choir’s five-octave set (the first and largest set of handbells in the city). “He never played—that was my mom’s area; she directed the choir for 40 years—but he drove across the country, climbed on roofs and went to countless festivals and concerts to repair the bells he’d sold,” says Nelson Jr. And much of that followup was done at no charge. “He did it purely out of his love of people and of the bells.”
As for his savvy as a salesman, in 1966 Nelson installed a $250,000 carillon at the University of British Columbia and, later that year, convinced the Alberta Legislature to purchase an equally impressive set of bells. Nelson subsequently established the still thriving Alberta Guild of English Handbell Ringers.
Meanwhile, Schulmerich—while no doubt delighted at the number of bells leaving their Pennsylvania factory for Canada—remained fuzzy on the impact of their devoted employee. “They had no clue what my dad was up to until one day a representative came up to travel with him,” says Nelson Jr. “They were blown away by the size of his territory and the influence he had—he was a handbell committee of one.” It came as no surprise to his friends, family and customers when, shortly after his retirement, the company named Nelson its top salesman in North America. If his lifetime of commitment hadn’t already won him that title, Nelson would have earned it by virtue of cheerfully closing deals from his hospital bed while recovering from a shattered femur at the age of 88.
And so, rather than Donne’s gloomy harbinger, perhaps the sound of a handbell or carillon (even a digital example like the one Nelson kitted MRU out with 40 years after he installed the original) might instead put you in mind of a life lived with maximum joy and gusto. Some might even say it’s the sound of an angel getting his wings.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.