After 29 years, a beloved neighbourhood relic is being relocated.
A 1915 First World War German cannon has been situated on the lawn of Pat and Gary Adams’ home on Crozier Crescent in Leamington since 1996.
Gary, an avid collector of many things, traded an antique train set to Len Phillips that year and had it installed on his front lawn.
“The kids in the neighbourhood had a lot of fun over the years,” he says. “I’d hear Fire One! Fire Two!”
Recently, Gary and his wife Pat began to wonder what would ever become of the piece in the future so they contacted the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa to see if they might be interested in taking it off their hands.
Lo and behold, the museum had records on that exact piece.
“They asked us to look for a serial number and when we looked, they could tell us everything about it,” says Pat.
The Canadian war trophy ledger lists it as a German Minenwerfer (trench mortar), which was captured in Northern France in 1918. It arrived in Cottam, Ontario, on March 22, 1922 via the Canadian National Railway and somehow made its way to the Phillips farm near Manning Road.
Gary says it was moved from the Phillips farm to Matheson’s Machine Shop in 1996 and restored by Don and Mike Matheson, Keith Abbott and Gary himself. It then got moved to the Adams’ front lawn.
The cannon weighs 1,362 pounds and it took a heavy equipment company and a moving company hired by the museum more than a few minutes to lift it off the lawn and into a waiting truck.
Pat says she hopes they’ll fix it up, for old times’ sake.
“Many kids have played on that over the years,” she said. “We’re hoping they’ll restore it and put it on display for all to enjoy.”
Members of the moving crew get the chains on the cannon as Gary Adams watches intently.
SUN photo by Mark Ribble
