Most good organ projects originate in the mind of a player. They rarely materialize because an organ salesman knocked on the door. The Knox College project was no exception: it was Dr. John Derksen, the college organist, who had the idea of a new organ. In a happy coincidence, he also learned about the existence of a mysterious organ fund.
 
The directions that most of our organ projects tend to take are also initially decided by the players. Just as it is not interesting for an architect to build a house for a family without knowing how they will live in the house, it would not be rewarding for an organ builder to build for players without knowing their tastes and musical intentions.
 
It was the college organist's fondness for the North German Baroque organ music that directed us toward a North European organ type. In addition, we could afford to build an organ in a fairly pure style: there is already an organ in the front of the chapel, dating from circa 1915, when the college was constructed, and there are several other instruments on the adjacent campus of the University of Toronto.
 
The restrictions that an historic type of organ might impose (for example, the absence of a swell box) did not cause any problems either. The future organ was meant to be used mainly for teaching purposes, for college ceremonies and services, for accompanying small groups of singers and/or instrumentalists, or for organ recitals.
 
It was thus that we wholeheartedly decided to build an historically oriented organ, although without initially choosing the style of the Swedish master Johan Niclas Cahman. Any other North German type might have sufficed, but I greatly admire Cahman's organ at Leufsta Bruk, and I was encouraged by my Swedish friend and colleague, Herwin Troje, to build an instrument after Cahman. Mr. Troje furnished me with copies of all the necessary documentation and gave much good advice during the planning and construction of the organ.
 
The organ at Leufsta Bruk was to be our model for the pipework, but for the case design and the technical construction of the Knox College organ we interpreted independently how an "historic" organ ought to be built. Apart from the Gothic case, there are some other departures from Cahman's style, for example, the two-story pedal tower and the addition of a Brustwerk which is desirable for the repertoire of the North Europen masters. Its short octave squares well with the "older" character of this keyboard division.
 
Other persons who gave valuable advice for the building of the Knox College organ are organists John Derksen, John Grew, Bengt Hambraeus, Harald Vogel, and builders John Brombaugh, Gerhard Hradetzky, Mads Kjersgaard, Johannes Rohlf, Jakob Schmidt, George Taylor, and John Boody. The organ itself was built by the following staff members: Claude Armand, François Beauchemin, François Couture, Suzanne Giroux, Gérard Gingras, Marguerite Howells, James Louder, Jens-Peter Petersen, Stephen Sinclair, and Hellmuth Wolff. The pipes were made by the firms of Ulrich Meisinger and Martin Pasi. The case design and the organs concept was drawn by Hellmuth Wolff, the plans were drawn by Denis Juget, the pipe shades were designed by François Beauchemin and carved by Jean Dutin. The gallery was designed by Denis Lamarre, architect, in collaboration with Hellmuth Wolff.

 
Bibliography, Discography, sound chips?  Link for more technical details:

http://infopuq.uquebec.ca/~uss1010/orgues/canada/torontokcc.html