Doherty Cathedral Organ goes home to Canada from Ireland
You may remember a Doherty Cathedral model organ I blogged about a few months ago. I decided not to restore it and was going to part it out until the happy news came from fellow reed organ enthusiast, Rodney Jantzi in Canada that a friend of his, Rowan Lalonde, was interested in bringing the organ back to Canada to include as an exhibit in his planned musical instrument museum.
There are many issues which arise when exporting a reed organ across the ocean to say nothing of when the organ is as big as the Doherty Cathedral. Rowan did all the ground work with the relevant authorities in Canada about import requirements. Did the organ have to be fumigated before leaving Ireland? If so how, where and how much would it cost? Thankfully fumigation was not required. Rowan also organised the shipper.
My job in Ireland was to find someone who could crate it up and certify the crating according to standards required by Canadian authorities. Having googled many times and made inquiries I found nothing until one day I came across a crating company ten minutes from my house. I called the company and in no time it was organised. I delivered the organ to the company and in a matter of days it was ready to be picked up by the shippers and off it went to Canada.
From this point it is over to Rodney Jantzi to decide if he is going to restore it or preserve it as an unrestored example of one of the biggest reed organs manufactured in Canada.
Here are some pictures of the crated organ and a link to a video showing the arrival in Canada. Over the next few months you will hear more about this exciting project as hopefully it will live to play another day.