Rufus Meisel had a Gun
polymerized plaster, revolver
2' x 3' x 2"
2007
The town of Preston in southern Ontario, at the confluence of the Speed and Grand Rivers, was first settled by Mennonites from Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. Preston no longer exists; in 1973 it was incorporated, along with Hespeler and Galt, into the municipality of Cambridge. Two friends raising families in Preston in the early part of the last century, Rufus Meisel and Ion Snider, had children, Doris Meisel and Edward Snider, who went to Galt Collegiate High School together.
Rufus had a grain and feed store in Preston, which fell on hard times during the Depression, causing him great personal distress. He no longer trusted himself with his gun, which he decided to give to Ion for safekeeping. The pistol was a nickel-plated, short-barreled, six-shot .32 calibre revolver, called the American Double Action, made by Harrington and Richardson in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Doris married Jack Shadbolt in 1945, and after working for the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, moved to Vancouver with Jack and joined the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1950. Edward Snider, who had been a career officer in the RCAF, retired to Tsawwassen in 1970. His son Greg met Doris the following year at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she was then Senior Curator. She agreed to an exhibition of his work at the VAG in 1976.
When Ion had died in 1963, the gun went to Edward. Greg learned that Doris Shadbolt's maiden name was Meisel and she had grown up in Preston, like his father. When asked if he had known Doris in school, his father said he had, and told the story of how Ion got the gun from Rufus. He died in November of 2003; Greg inherited the gun and immediately wanted to let Doris know what he had found out. At the time she was traveling in Mexico where she died that December.
In 2007 the gun was split in half and embedded. The object endures.