Following the restoration project on Moose Jaw’s city hall clocktower, volunteers John Trodd and Murray Rimmer decided to do something interesting in an effort to preserve a little piece of Moose Jaw’s history.
Rather than simply discarding the original glass, Trodd and Rimmer felt it was best to donate them to a local artisan. Not being artistically inclined – in their own words – they decided to hand them over to Yvette Moore and let her decide how best to approach the idea.
This arrangement was perfect, they felt, largely due to the fact that Moore often focuses her subject matter on scenery in and around Moose Jaw – including a noteworthy piece featuring city hall titled “A Century of Time.”
Moore said she was happy to receive the historical artifacts but knew she wouldn’t be the one to create something with them as her medium of choice is paint on canvas. As a true artist would, she held on to them and knew the right opportunity would present itself.
That opportunity came when a retired area farmer moved to town and wanted something to represent a piece of Moose Jaw’s history.
“We moved here last summer,” said Rick Booth, who recently moved to Moose Jaw with his wife, Leslie. “We love it. We can’t believe it; it’s just incredible (living here).”
Originally from an acreage around 19 kilometres southwest of Regina, Booth said he and his wife would often come for a weekend drive to Moose Jaw to enjoy lunch or to simply look around town.
“Everybody around here – all the neighbours – are super nice,” he said. “We can walk downtown, and Moose Jaw has all the amenities and anything I could ask for.”
Not only does Booth now live near Moore, he and his wife are frequent patrons at the Yvette Moore Gallery and have come to know her on a personal level.
“In the gallery there was the painting of city hall, and we wanted to get one of Yvette’s paintings,” he said about what he described as the “quintessential” Moose Jaw landmark.
Not long after the purchase, Moore reached out and said she received some glass from the building’s clock tower simply as a point of interest.
“And I said, well, could I have a little piece of that (glass)… to have beside the painting, just to talk about and say that it’s actually a piece of glass from the original clockface?” Booth asked.
Moore – who was looking for an ideal way to preserve the artifacts but without plans of her own – agreed to the idea and offered the roughly 12-centimetre fragment to the Booths.
Today, Booth keeps the glass displayed next to the painting and said it has been a great conversation starter.
“I just appreciate the history,” Booth said. “I appreciate old things and the skill, talent, and effort that was put into making something beautiful, like that building and that clock.”
Booth isn’t planning to expand his collection beyond this, as he pointed out that his wife has been gently persuading him to scale back on some of his previous collections.
“The whole idea of coming here was to downsize and get away from that kind of thing, and just simplify (everything) so the things we do keep are important and special… to us,” he explained.
Still, if there can be only one way to symbolize the Notorious City, Booth suggested this is it.
“As I sit in my living room, I get to just sit there and look at it… it’s just part of Moose Jaw for us,” he said, noting that the glass is an important reminder of the love they both share for their new home in a city they describe as “the right fit.”
