Hear ye: Annapolis Royal installing clock and chimes to honour town crier

Friends of an iconic town crier for Annapolis Royal, N.S., are installing a new town clock with chimes to celebrate his legacy.

Peter Davies's "Hear ye" cry was a staple at Canada Days, Christmases, and farmers' markets in Annapolis Royal, Bridgetown and just about anywhere else in the Annapolis Valley that needed to bring a little colour and history to an event. After more than two decades of proclamations, he announced his retirement in the fall after a diagnosis with terminal cancer.

Jim Medill has been a friend for years and helped lead the effort to install the clock on the Town Hall tower. It will face Fort Anne and will play the famous Westminster chimes daily at noon AT.

"He's actually known as the ambassador of enthusiasm for our town," Medill told CBC's Mainstreet. "We wanted to find something that was a legacy for Peter."

He said his friend has also helped set up musical bands and other community-building groups since arriving in the town 30 years ago. He said they need to raise another $3,500 to finish the job. Local stores and people are contributing goods and funds, he said, and many tradespeople are working for free or at reduced rates.

"The clock's in town, it's in place, it's ready to be installed," Medill said. It could go up as soon as the first week of July. 

Peter Davies said he loved his years as town crier.

"I thought it was a good idea to get some of these events out into the public. This is one of the cheap ways I could do it and have a lot of fun doing it," he said. "I didn't do 140 every year. It was mainly 100."

'I was completely staggered,' says Peter Davies

He said he got to meet lots of people and celebrate his beloved Annapolis Royal.

"I was completely staggered. That was the last thing I expected," he said of the clock. "They're just amazing guys and I do thank them."

He said hearing the Westminster chimes completes an idea dating back to when he arrived in the town in 1990. "It always struck me as being rather strange that we had this town hall with a nice tower and it had these big circles at the very top," he told CBC's Mainstreet.

He said in 1921, there was a clock there, but he could find no photographs of it, just fading memories in the older residents who recalled checking it on the way to school. Davies helped install one clock on the tower in 2017, leaving three blank faces.

He said the new clock means a lot of things — some of them rather practical. "It would help people keep time," he said with his trademark dry humour.

And he gave one more cry on behalf of his hometown.

"Annapolis is an old town. It's been careful in guarding its heritage resources and I believe it's the sort of place that has a nice quality to it, a nice feeling to it," he said.

"I think if people could come here, they would enjoy this feeling of history and how much the town guards its history. Anybody coming will have a good time, that's for sure."

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