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Orangeville clock tower: 40 years in the making

September 28, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER

For at least one Orangeville resident, it’s never too late to see the town’s clock tower be correct more than twice a day.

Henry Vandendam is the son of John Vandendam, who was Orangeville’s public works superintendent in the 1970s. His father trained to be a cabinet maker in Holland. Then, after moving to Canada in the 1950s, John Vandendam built houses.

He said John Vandendam built a number of projects around the municipality, such as the Hubert Edelbrock pyramid, which is alleged to contain a time capsule.

Inside that time capsule, Henry Vandendam said, is a cheque for $1-million.

“There’s no funds to back it up, though,” he said.

Another of the features John Vandendam constructed was the bell tower atop the old fire hall.

The clock faces came from a former post office in town that was ripped down sometime around 1960. The clocks sat at the public works building for some years in storage.

“My dad discovered them,” Vandendam said.

“He knew that the clock didn’t work right,” he said. “The mechanism that keeps the time was never right.” 

But he said, “Well, if we put it up there, maybe they can find some money later to fix it.”

“What is it now? Forty years later.”

The current town council decided in June that $50,000 be drawn from the municipal general reserve fund. The Verdin Company of Woodstock will repair the clock tower located within the Broadway median between First and Second Streets.

That’s where the clock tower has been since it was removed from the Town Hall Opera House.

“They took it down from the town hall because it wasn’t historically accurate,” Henry Vandendam said.

The tower has historic value and has been one of the focal points of Orangeville’s downtown since the inception of the downtown medians in the early 2000s.

But, the clock’s inaccuracy has drawn negative attention in recent years, even though it’s undergone numerous repairs over the years with limited success.

Public Works staff reviewed the clock’s mechanical components earlier this year to determine a permanent repair.

It was recognized that this repair would be more expensive than the average repairs that have been undertaken in the past. It should be noted that there are limited companies that specialize in the restoration of these types of clocks.

Initially, it was determined that repairs to the time-keeping mechanisms would yield acceptable results. However, after some discussion and review, the Verdin Company reconsidered its approach and recommended that the time-keeping components behind the clock face be completely replaced.

Some of the mechanisms have been modified over the years and cannot be further adjusted. Verdin asserted that new technology allows for more accurate time-keeping, easier time setting and better access to simple maintenance.

The whole point of the clock tower and some of the other municipal bells and whistles was to spruce up the Town of Orangeville.

“In the 1970s, the downtown was pretty tough looking,” Vandendam said. “Everything looked pretty run down.”

And business owners had started to voice their discontent to town council.

“The town council was pretty cheap then and they were freaking out that it was going to cost money,” he said.

Victor Large, who was mayor at the time, and John Vandendam would bat around ideas of what could be done for the downtown core.

“So they decided to spruce up the town,” he said. “Make things look better.

“That was the start of the beautification of Broadway.”

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