In the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day, the Royal Canadian Legion put out a call across Canada for bell-ringers to mark the occasion. It didn’t take long for St. Albert to answer that call.
If you were passing by the St. Albert United Church on Green Grove Drive around sunset on Sunday, you would have hard the melodic ringing of bells – a mirror of the bells that likely rang a century ago to mark the end of the First World War.
"It was very special, and it was special to do it together as a group," said Holly Parker, one of the organizers and participants in 100 Bells for Peace.
“It was something that was happening not just in Canada but around the world.”
The event happened Canada-wide. From one side of the country to the other, starting with Newfoundland, bells rang out 100 times as the sun went down to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day – a chiming wave that went from one end of the country to the other.
That country-wide connection hit home for Parker, whose sister in Toronto went to a bell-ringing just hours prior. Shortly after hearing from her sister about the experience, Parker and nine other hand-bell ringers from the church’s two hand-bell choirs stood outside the church in the mild winter weather and filled the evening air with joyous noise.
“I was really glad to have 10 of us that were able to come together and know that we were part of that much larger group doing it locally here to represent that peace. Other choir members were thinking of the moment of the bells ringing and the stories we heard earlier in the day of, as the peace was announced at that time back in 1918, bells began to ring out in celebration of the fact that there was peace,” Parker said.
“For our city, at the time they heard that there was peace, I wonder if the bell at the Catholic church rang. That would have been the bell – I don't know if it rang back then, but I will think of it ringing in celebration.”
