Fix o'clock: City looking into why its historic timepiece has stopped working ... again

The 111-year-old clock in Calgary's Historic City Hall has stopped keeping accurate time — again, spurring another probe of the troubled timepiece. 

The last time that happened was a couple of a years ago when the timemarker was re-installed following a lengthy restoration of the building's sandstone exterior.

After a fix, the well-known clock was again ticking along, until recently when workers noticed it had stopped keeping accurate time.  

Jilian Henderson, facility management executive advisor at the City of Calgary, said the cause of the problem is a bit of a mystery.

"Whether there's something going on with the mechanism because it's quite a complex clock or if it's age related, as you know it stopped working just prior to the Historic City Hall rehabilitation," Henderson said.

"So we're just trying to narrow down what the issue is and then that will inform what we can do for next steps."

Trouble-shooting issues can be tricky as it's a large and fairly rare timekeeper, she said.

The Seth Thomas clock is one of only 50 of the model ever made, and is one of 12 still operating without modernizations such as auto-winding or electronics. Calgary's clock is the only one of its kind left in Canada.

Until it's running again, the large four-sided clock in city hall's tower will remain set at 12 o'clock.