HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-02-11, Page 19THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2016. PAGE 19.
McNeil works to restore Brussels artifact by summer
Back from the dead
After years of looking, Don McNeil is working to restore a
historical artifact from Brussels in the form of an old
machine gun that used to sit in front of the village's library.
He hopes to be done by the summer. (Shawn Loughlin photo)
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Don McNeil, a collector of all
things about Brussels history, is
getting very close to bringing back
an important part of Brussels history
as part of his famous parade car.
For decades, to the right of the
staircase that led to the entrance of
the Brussels Library, sat a machine
gun, the origins of which no one is
quite sure, says McNeil. He has fond
memories of the artifact, as it was a
standard stop for him and his friends
on their walk home from school
every day.
"We played on it every day on our
way back from the public school,"
McNeil said.
McNeil and some of the other
neighbourhood boys used to climb
on the gun and pretend to shoot
passing cars or people walking down
the street, he said. That was,
however, until the Brussels police
officer of the day, Dave Hastings,
would walk by and tell the boys to
run along, saying they'd had their
fun for the day.
Sometime in the 1950s, McNeil
estimates, the gun went missing.
There are a number of tales attached
to the disappearance of the gun,
whether it be that it was stolen and
thrown in the Maitland River or that
it was sold for its brass one night.
None of the tales have been
confirmed, but what is true is that the
gun went missing at some point,
never to return. It was soon followed
by the base, which, without the gun
to sit atop it, was removed from the
library property.
For years, McNeil was on an
active search for the gun or the base,
asking around and trying to find any
information he could about the
items' whereabouts.
Last year he got a break, when
talking to a fellow local collector
who said he in fact had the base,
having pulled it from a wooded area
near the Brussels brush dump in the
north end of the village.
The man said he had recovered the
base over 30 years earlier and had
been holding onto it ever since.
McNeil, very interested in
obtaining the base, began asking the
man if he'd be interested in selling it
and, at the time, he was not.
After persistent negotiations,
however, McNeil was able to buy the
base from the man last year and
immediately went to work fixing it
up and thinking about his next steps.
With the gun long gone, McNeil
knew that at best he was going to
have a solid, refurbished base with
nothing to put atop it.
However, he started doing some
research and he thinks he's narrowed
down the type of gun that used to sit
to the right of the Brussels Library
steps.
McNeil says it's a Maxim MG08.
The gun was first produced in 1884
by Hiram Maxim, an American who
moved to England, only to have his
gun design copied by the Germans.
From the research McNeil has
conducted, the gun was in use
between 1908 and 1945. It was a
Bolger's team finishes second on show
Silver
Erin Bolger finished second on Sugar Showdown
week, a showing she's proud of. (Photo submitted)
By Denny Scott
The Citizen
Blyth native Erin Bolger finished
second in her bid at sweet
supremacy on Sugar Showdown, a
show which pits dessert -making
professionals against each other,
aired in Canada on Feb. 4.
Bolger runs the Pink Flamingo
Bakery and Boutique in Bayfield
and found literary success with her
book The Happy Baker: A Dater's
Guide To Emotional Baking, which
was released in 2009.
Bolger, who was up against two
bakers from the United States,
cooked two separate desserts, one
with the mystery ingredient of fresh
figs and the second a princess -
themed cupcake.
last
Bolger said she would have loved
to win, but the exposure from the
show, which aired south of the
border prior to airing in Canada, was
good to have. She said the
competition flew by when she and
her assistant Sharon Thompson were
on -set.
"You're there for hours, but when
you're doing the final challenge, it
required 487 cupcakes in 90 minutes
including butter cream, which isn't a
lot of time," she said. "We were
running around, scrambling to create
something and making sure it looked
good because presentation was as
much a part of the project as taste
is."
She said she and Thompson were
busy scrambling around trying to
create something that was unique,
but also not out of their comfort
zone.
"You have to be confident about
what you're making, so you don't
want to be too crazy," she said.
Bolger said she felt that her
princess -themed desserts, which
included fondant frogs, may not
have been what the judges were
looking for, but everyone else says
they loved them and thought they
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looked great. The princess -theme
also allowed Bolger to craft the
signature cupcake of The Pink
Flamingo Bakery and Boutique that
she runs in Bayfield, the pink
lemonade cupcake which the judges
said was great.
The princess -theme, however,
gave Bolger some pause.
"For me the princess thing is
scary," she said. "I'm great with
colour and texture and visually I'll
know what looks good but I wasn't
really a `princess' when I was a kid."
The uncertainty of the competition
Continued on page 20
large weapon, he said, that took five
soldiers to operate it.
After conducting his extensive
research, he set to making a replica
of the gun, using muffler parts and
various other parts he had in his
shop/museum. He worked with
Brussels' Peter Gray, who owns a
welding shop in the village, for some
of the welding work.
While it has been constructed to
look identical to the gun that once
sat atop the base, it is not a
functioning weapon and never will
be. McNeil says that perhaps one
day he hopes to equip the machine to
shoot potatoes, but he has not yet
taken that step.
While he isn't quite done, he
hopes to have the base completely
refurbished by the summer, so it can
perhaps become part of his famous
parade car in time for the Brussels
Fall Fair parade.
While making the artifact part of
his parade car and, in turn, public
events is part of the goal, McNeil
also hopes that perhaps it can be
used as a teaching tool at public
events and maybe even at schools.
For the immediate future,
however, McNeil still has some
work to do to get the item ready for
the public later this year.
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