The brick High Gothic church is the work of famed New York architect, Patrick Charles Keely, the designer of over 600 Roman Catholic churches in eastern North America. The cornerstone was laid on June 9, 1859, with completion of the church coming about in 1860. The magnificent pipe organ was installed in 1882 while the church's interior decoration took place primarily in 1885. Standing 185 feet high at the top of the steeple, this is the largest church on Prince Edward Island.
Known colloquially as Tignish Church is a 19th century Roman Catholic church located in Tignish parish, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
As of 2006, it is the single largest church on Prince Edward Island, measuring 185 feet high. It can be clearly seen for 6 miles on flat land, and for many more miles at sea. It is perhaps most famous for its widely publicized apparition of Jesus event...
Famous Organ
In 1882 a 1,118–pipe hand–pumped church organ, was installed by long–standing priest Dugald M. McDonald. Although the organ was purchased for $2,400.00 CAD in 1882, its current retail value is an estimated $1 million USD. The organ was featured in many of the documentation done by Henry Gaudet, a former member of the parish. It has also been featured on many local newscasts and newspapers. The organ was manually operated by hand pump until electricity was first provided in Tignish in 1959. The organ still resides at the church to the present day.
From The Church
Several news articles concerning this pipe organ have been published over the years. The article reprinted in part below is from the Summerside Journal Pioneer, published on June 09, 2011. This article was written during the restoration of the 1,118 pipe organ.
Church's pipe organ will play on
Eric McCarthy
Published on June 09, 2011
TIGNISH - Antoinette Perry says she has been thinking about the late Henri Gaudet a lot lately.
It had been a long-held dream of Gaudet's to have the Louis Mitchell tracker action organ in the St. Simon and St. Jude Roman Catholic Church's choir loft restored. He stood his ground in an era when it appeared the organ might be lost.
"To have done away with the Tignish Organ, would have been an indictment against a priceless historic treasure," he wrote in his book "The Tignish Pipe Organ in Musical Retrospect 1882-1892."
Gaudet's dream is finally being fulfilled. A crew from Juget-Sinclair, a Montreal company that builds and restores organs, is in Tignish this week reassembling the large musical instrument. They dismantled the components in January and carted them away to their workshop to be restored.
Perry, who is one of the organists who succeeded Gaudet, can hardly wait to get back at the organ's keys.
"I'll be trying it. When they first can get that going I'll be around," she said.
That will likely not happen until at least Father's Day. A five-member crew from the company is spending all of this week reassembling the components. Two of the technicians will stay for another 10 days to do the voicing and the tuning of the pipes.
Perry is chair of the organ restoration steering committee, which has been fundraising and planning for the project since 2007. Total cost of the project, she said, will be in the $150,000 range. A new drive was launched in April to raise the final $50,000, and Perry said as of June 5 they were $22,977 from their objective. Donations are still flowing in.
Read on at the Summerside Journal Pioneer