Robert Plourde, left, a teacher at Ecole d’horlogerie de Trois-Rivieres, works on the Swiss gift clock in Quebec City last Wednesday.Francis Vachon
As timepieces go, the Jura clock in Quebec City is a masterwork – a ticking monument of titanium, sapphire and legendary Swiss expertise. But there has been one niggling problem since it was received as a gift from Switzerland and installed last fall.
It has been having trouble keeping time.
In what has been a source of jokes in the Quebec capital and news reports across the Atlantic, the $2.4-million Swiss clock in the heart of Quebec City's historic quarter has required repeated adjustments to make it accurate. In the process, Switzerland's reputation for precision has taken a licking.
"It's very beautiful," provincial civil servant Benoît Plourde said in a typical comment last week after stopping to admire the clock. "But it's more like a piece of art than a reference for keeping time."
The jabs are inevitable given the gift's billing as a "masterpiece of precision." A gift to Quebec City for its 400th birthday from the Canton of Jura, the clock was unveiled before dozens of Swiss and Quebec City dignitaries in September. Quebec City's mayor, Régis Labeaume, qualified the clock as an "icon" of his city. Richard Mille, the high-end watchmaker who created it, called it "Quebec City's Big Ben." Swiss diplomats described it as a symbol of the friendship between Jura, Switzerland, and Quebec City.
If that is the case, the friendship is slightly out of whack and requires frequent upkeep.
Less than two weeks after its installation, someone noticed that one face of the two-sided clock was a minute out of sync with the other face. The city had to wait for a replacement hand to arrive from Switzerland months later before the problem was solved.
Then, this month, another nettlesome issue arose: Both sides of the clock were running six minutes fast.
Experts were dispatched from Quebec's watch-repair school in Trois-Rivières, and white-coated technicians went to work last week trying to tackle the matter. The city, minimizing the problem, says the calibrations are part of the clock's normal adjustment period.
Still, there are questions whether this testament to Swiss accuracy met its match in Quebec's winter. The clock was originally intended to be placed inside a municipal library, but the city decided to move it outdoors next to City Hall. The move required placing the clock inside a half-million-dollar, temperature-controlled glass cage.
Even Salvador Arbona, a technical director at Richard Mille, initially said he was surprised by the shift in location, noting the large temperature gap between Quebec summers and winters. Reached in Switzerland on Thursday, however, Mr. Arbona said he was "pleasantly" surprised by the new location. And he defended the clock, saying the six-minute advance in time took place over a month, which came to only "12 seconds a day."
"We are currently in the validation process of the clock. There are small adjustments to finalize," Mr. Arbona said. "We do not wish for the clock to be running fast or slow, and we will work towards that."
The clock's troubles have not gone unnoticed in Switzerland, a country where watchmaking rivals cheese, chocolate and discreet bankers as sources of national identity. One news report picked up by several Swiss outlets recounted the woes of the Quebec City timepiece: "A Swiss watch that isn't punctual – it does exist," it read. "The giant clock given as a present last year by the Canton of Jura to Quebec City is six minutes fast."
In Quebec City, the clock has become something of a running gag. On social media, some have proposed the mayor regift it. Even Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre couldn't resist ribbing Mr. Labeaume during a visit this winter. With Montreal's 375th anniversary coming up, Mr. Coderre told his Quebec City counterpart to think twice about his gift: "I got scared. I thought you were going to give me the big clock."
To be sure, the Jura clock is a marvel to behold. Sleek, modern, one of a kind, it rises more than 11 feet and displays a constellation of gleaming gears and cogs moving seamlessly together. The clock took six years to make and its movement contains 3,150 parts. The city hopes it will become a major tourist draw, and last week several passersby stopped to gape at its intricate inner workings.
Their comments, however, underscore the challenge for the Jura clock. Cindy Dickinson, a 36-year-old Quebec City resident who was on a break from her job at the licence bureau, said there was no question the clock was "magnificent." But she wouldn't trust it to give her the correct time. "For that," she said, "I would rely on my smartphone."