St. Joseph’s Parish plans to ring its bells again to acknowledge the first anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic and provide residents with a message of renewed hope and encouragement.
The bells will ring out from the Roman Catholic church from March 8 to 12, beginning at noon each day and lasting for about five to 10 minutes. March 11 will be a particularly special day, as that is when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic last year.
St. Joseph’s bells rang in 2020, starting in the spring until mid-June, as a message of encouragement and a reminder that many were praying for society’s well-being during the lockdown.
Martin Rossler, the church’s maintenance manager, rang the bells last year and will do the honours again this year.
The community’s positive response last year showed that residents appreciated the uplifting sound, said Janie Fries, who initiated the idea to ring the bells daily during the lockdown. The parish took a break from the activity in June but did not know how long that break would be. However, Fries and others realized that the bells should ring again for the first anniversary of the pandemic announcement.
Fries acknowledged that many people probably want to forget about the pandemic or its anniversary. However, she pointed out that some have expressed surprised at how quickly the year went by while others said it seemed to drag out.
“But either way, we’ve gone through a lot together,” she continued. “So I think just the fact we’ve been in this together, we’ve gotten this far, we can get to the end of it, we can get through it all — I think that’s one of the important messages.
“We’re still here to support each other until the very end.”
While the bells will ring out for only a week, Fries noted that they could ring again for special occasions, such as when the last vaccination shot is delivered in the province.
“I wish there were more churches with bells in the city, that’s for sure,” she chuckled. “It would be nice if we could hear them all over the city. But I’m always surprised at the number of people who say they’ve heard them and the distance that they are from St. Joseph’s … .
“It would be such a joyful sound if we did have that (city-wide bell ringing).”
Fries added that residents do not need to visit the church to listen to the bells. Instead, they can step outside for a few minutes around noon and listen to the musical instruments’ tolling.
Besides St. Joseph, one of the few churches with bells in Moose Jaw is St. Aidan Anglican Church on High Street East. The Anglican church joined the Roman Catholic parish last year to regularly ring the bells and continue ringing them.
Every Sunday at 7 p.m., Rhoda Cairns takes to St. Aidan’s bell tower and performs songs out of the hymn book for about an hour. Parishioners have been encouraged to sit outside the church — in their vehicles or on benches or chairs — to listen to the peaceful music.
It’s not just members of the church who have enjoyed the music, either. The parish administrator and priests have noted that residents who live in nearby apartment buildings crack open their windows during the warmer months to allow the music to seep in.
Those residents have also been known to bring a chair or walker to the church and sit across the street while listening to classic and newer Anglican hymns.
