Whitehorse church pipe organ, damaged by fire, gets a new lease on life

Members of Whitehorse's Trinity Lutheran Church believed their beloved pipe organ was beyond repair. It was damaged in a fire at the church in 2017.

But Jason Barnsley, a restoration specialist from Calgary, says it can be rebuilt. It needs a new console and wiring, but the rest of the organ's parts survived the fire. 

This past week, Barnsley and his small crew of three were at the church in Whitehorse dismantling and boxing up the many pieces of the mechanically complex, century-old organ. They'll spend the coming months restoring the various parts in Calgary.

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle constructed by a crazy person," said Barnsley.

"I actually know where everything goes, but if a layperson were coming into this they would go, 'I think you're nuts trying to put this all together ... there are a million and one pieces here.'"

Barnsley can even guess what started the fire inside the organ — its aging control centre.

"Those are all modern now, using solid-state control systems versus the original hardwiring and a lot of electricity, which is ultimately what caused it to catch fire — because there was so much wiring inside," he said.

He says the pneumatic pipe organ's inner workings are as complex as those of fine Swiss watch.

Barnsley says the organ's analog electrical systems were ahead of their time when it was built in 1926. He compares it to "very early, early computing."

From Pennsylvania to Whitehorse

The pneumatic pipe organ's 762 individual pipes plus numerous parts originally made their journey from Pennsylvania to Whitehorse 40 years ago.

Whitehorse church members had seen an ad in a magazine, and ended up buying the organ for a dollar. The organ's previous owner, a church in Pennsylvania, wanted the organ to have a northern home.

The organ filled Trinity Lutheran with glorious sound for decades — and it's hoped that will continue soon.

Once all the parts are at Barnsley's shop in Calgary, he'll fix it up with modern wiring. It will likely be returned to Whitehorse and rebuilt in about a year.

"We are hoping that by revitalizing the pipe organ we will be able to offer a really fine instrument in an intimate concert venue to the larger Whitehorse community," said Deb Bartlette, a minister at Trinity Lutheran Church.