73-year-old Casavant Pipe organ serves as unique war memorial to fallen Saint John Vocational School students. Alumni of the Saint John Vocational School, now Harbour View High School, commissioned the organ from the legendary Quebec-based organ builder Casavant Frères in the fall of 1943.
It was installed and dedicated in a ceremony on March 18, 1944, to honour the students who had already enlisted and died in the war. Over the course of the Second World War, 834 students enlisted, including 86 young women. Fifty-three of them died. Simon Couture, vice-president of Casavant Frères, says the organ cost $4200 in 1943, a good deal a the time. The organ was not new actually, it was repurposed. This instrument was installed first in 1939 in a private home north of Montreal and we had to take the organ back after a few years because the client couldn't make the payments. The plaque contains the second last stanza of a poem written anonymously in 1944 to honour the fallen students of Saint John Vocational.
