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A musical bit of history
 Amid the glass cabinets full of clothes and crockery, lamp and leathers sits a silent, ornate, antique pump organ in a corner of the Bonnyville Museum. The Swift Organ has been on loan to the Historical Society from Swift's granddaughter since October 1991.
John Swift (1881 -1981) was a Scot who, along with his young wife, followed his father to Nova Scotia in 1903. Like his father and his grandfather, Swift was a steel roller and continued as one when he moved from Motherwell, Scotland, to Amherst. At his retirement in 1953, he had worked for the Canada Car Plant for 40 years.
Swift and his wife sang in their United Church choir with Swift occasionally playing church organ. He purchased the Swift Organ for $50 from a Baptist church in Tidnish in the early 1950s. The church was being dismantled and its contents sold off after a fire.
According to his family, he only played sacred music, never popular songs, on the organ and was still playing at 97 years of age.
"In my mind, grandfather and the organ went together", says granddaughter Joan Fielding who inherited the organ.
The instrument came West when Swift's daughter, Hannah Crowell, moved here six years ago from Amherst.
The organ, says Riel Croteau, "was about the best reed organ I've seen in this area." He cleaned it before it went to the Historical Society. No repairs were necessary despite the fact that all the workings, like the leather bellows, were original.
The organ has a few features that distinguish it from other
antique organs, says Croteau. It has only one keyboard unlike
most church organs of similar size which had two, and the
pump pedals fold back inside, something Croteau had never
seen before.
 The
most outstanding aspect of the organ is the elaborate decoration.
It is an eclectic mix of several design styles. For example,
there are nature-inspired elements from the English folk
arts tradition coupled with the precise angular carving
of Bavarian furniture.
The original organ was over 10 feet tall but a 4 foot mid-section was removed so it fit in Swift's home. The ornately carved mid-section was lost but the family remembers a metal plate on it which said the organ had been in the Baptist church from May 11, 1758.
"We remember that because it was exactly 200 years to the date of my daughter's birthdate", says Fielding.
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