On a very humid afternoon early in June, I noticed that some of the lowest notes on the organ pedals felt a bit sluggish as I practiced. Two days later, the same pedal notes responded with noticeably greater ease - and I knew I hadn’t improved that much!

So I did a little research about how pipe organs are affected by climate and weather, especially tracker organs like our Kney instrument, that operate entirely by mechanical action (except for the electric blower). Sure enough, humidity and temperature do play a major role in a pipe organ’s quality-of-life; think of all those interlocking pieces of wood, wire, tin, copper and fabric all expanding and contracting at different rates… It then made sense to me why Marlin reminds people to leave the swell shutters open in the summer, so the environment inside the organ case is the same as the space around it.

All this new-found information prompted me to send a photo and climate-related explanation to The Weather Network and to my surprise, they aired it later in June. Ever since then I’ve had dozens of friends, relatives and colleagues all over Canada phoning, e-mailing and writing to say they saw St. John’s Kney organ on TV!

- submitted by Pauline Finch