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Christmas is often a time of gathering and community for church communities, but one church on the outskirts of Fredericton found itself a victim of theft this holiday season.
A large, historic bell, chained up on display at ground level next to St. Peter’s Anglican Church on Woodstock Road, was swiped in the early morning hours of a cold night just days after Christmas.
“We’d like our bell back, please,” said Ross Hebb, who served as minister at St. Peter’s from 1996 to 2022.
“Just imagine, you know, [if] they went down to the front of the Government House or the Beaverbrook Museum and swiped the statue. There would be quite an outcry there, and it’s the same sort of thing.”
Ross Hebb, a former minister at St. Peter’s, said the bell weighed several hundred pounds and was likely mostly made from brass. (Submitted by Ross Hebb)
Hebb said the congregation has had its ups and downs in size, but a tight-knit group still attends services at the church, which was built in 1837.
Parishioners noticed the bell’s chains were loose on Christmas Eve but attributed this to the cold, blustery weather at the time, he said.
“But it’s now speculated that the thieves came by and cut off the chains to get access to be able to take the bell away,” Hebb said, “And then they discovered how many hundreds of pounds the bell weighed and weren’t able to abscond with it at that time.”
Hebb said members of the church community were upset over the theft, “but it mainly is bewilderment, you know, that we now live in the day and age and that people would have such a lack of respect that they would steal historic church bells.”
He estimated the bell is several hundred pounds and likely is mostly made of brass.
A spokesperson for the Fredericton police said in an email statement on Tuesday that they were investigating a stolen bell but could not share any details.
The bell was hung from chains at ground level until it was taken by a thief. (Sam Farley/CBC)
Later that evening, the force posted on social media that the bell was stolen at about 2:15 a.m. on Dec. 29.
The post included a grainy photo of a black pickup truck with no licence plate visible. Police are seeking information about the pickup.
Both the church and the spot where the bell hung are clearly visible from Woodstock Road, a busy corridor into downtown Fredericton from the western suburbs along the city’s south side.
Hebb said the security camera footage was not from the church but a neighbouring property.
“As I understand it, the church is not really having an attitude towards their fellow human beings as such that we need to have security cameras on everything, particularly 200-year-old, 300-pound bells.”
Bell a historical artifact from Loyalists
Hebb said the church has a bell in its own bell tower, but the stolen one outside has been kept at the church as a historical artifact.
Hebb, who has a PhD in Church of England history, said the Loyalists arrived in Fredericton in the 1780s and built the first Anglican church, which was a wooden, Georgian-style building.
“But of course, it was very expensive even to build wooden churches in New Brunswick because they were carving things out of the wilderness and they couldn’t afford a bell. So it was sometime later before they actually bought a bell.”
Hebb said the bell, which had been displayed just outside the church, was originally from a wooden Anglican church built by the Loyalists in downtown Fredericton. (Sam Farley/CBC)
A bell was eventually bought for that church from England, and was stamped 1825.
But when New Brunswick received its first Anglican bishop in 1845, he wanted to build a stone cathedral, Hebb said.
“And so the wooden church that was on the Cathedral Green had to go. So it was torn down and of course the bell that was in it was surplus,” Hebb said.
That bell was then brought outside St. Peter’s, where it stayed until just a few days ago when it was stolen.
“So we were playing a curatorial role, you could say, for that piece of local cultural and architectural history. No one else wanted it, but we were willing to take it and to display it.
“So St. Peter’s considers it, you know, in some very real sense, their bell now, too.”