Obituary: Ray Saunders, the builder of the Gastown Steam Clock

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Ray Saunders worked on virtually every public clock in Vancouver. But he will forever be linked with the Gastown Steam Clock, the incredibly popular timepiece he built and unveiled in 1977.

It was so popular Saunders was hired to build another six steam clocks around the world, including a model in Katoomba, Australia that plays Waltzing Matilda.

On Saturday night, Saunders passed away after a night playing poker with friends. He was 84.

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Saunders had a dreadful fall in Sept. 2020 where he broke his pelvis and some vertebrae, cracked three ribs, dislocated and fractured his shoulder, and opened a gash to the head that required 15 stitches.

But he was back at work after three months in hospital, albeit in an advisory role on the larger public clocks. His last big job was rebuilding the neon clock on top of the Vancouver Block, which he finished in July.

“I’ve just been pointing, (assistant Dylan Scott’s) been doing all the work,” Saunders said in July. “I’m not allowed to climb ladders anymore after my tragic fall.”

Raymond Lee Saunders was born in Courtenay on Feb. 7, 1940 and moved to Vancouver in his teens.  His love affair with clocks began when his father gave him a box full of alarm clocks to rebuild in his teens.

Saunders worked in the clock department at Woodward’s department store for 11 years before striking out on his own. In 1974 he was approached about building a steam clock to mask a steam vent at the northwest corner of Water and Cambie streets.

So he did, although it took three years and cost $58,000 to build. Initially it left him $22,000 in the hole, but a benefactor heard of his plight and wrote him a cheque to cover his losses.

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“I broke even on the job,” he said in 2019.

The steam clock doesn’t actually run on steam, it’s electric. But its steam whistle has drawn countless tourists to Gastown, who crowd around to see it go off, rain or shine.

“The clock itself is a beauty,” wrote the Vancouver Sun’s Alan Daniels when it was unveiled in 1977.

“It’s 16-feet tall, made of gleaming bronze and copper. Its large central whistle will sound the hours with a noise like an 1890s locomotive. Four smaller whistles, one for each corner, will play the Westminster Chimes, every 15 minutes.”

In the clock world, Saunders was known as a “horologist,” the technical name for someone who makes or repairs clocks and watches. He kept busy restoring clocks and advising clock collectors, right up until he died.

For many years he lived in a giant space above his workshop in an industrial area, where he had room for his collection of a “couple of hundred” clocks. One shelf held a collection of bootleg mini-Gastown steam clocks that were sold in tourist shops.

He was always dreaming up new designs. He was recently working on a proposal for a new “railway clock” by the Roundhouse in Yaletown.

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Like Saunders’ other clocks, he described it as “whimsical,” with “a structural steel framework made out of railway tracks, a train bell on top that bongs the hours, and caboose lights on the top of the roof that have different coloured lights flashing as the chimes go off.” 

“The unique chimes are going to be made out of welded lengths of railway spikes,” he said in an October interview.

He had the $300,000 financing lined up, but he didn’t want to go public with the design until he was ready to submit it to the City of Vancouver.

Saunders was married and divorced twice. He is survived by his five children, James, Marion, Julia, Kate and Stevan.

jmackie@postmedia.com

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