By John Chenier
What’s a community without a community garage? As garages and gas stations desert the central core of Ottawa, community garages are becoming few and far between. The combination service stations —gas and garage —that used to be at almost every major intersection are long gone from most neighbourhoods. Lowertown residents can count themselves fortunate in that we have one gas bar and two garages to service our vehicles, Spark Auto Service Center on Nelson Street east of King Edward Avenue and Roland Levesques & Fils on Cumberland in Lowertown West.
Spark Auto has been part of the Nelson Street scene for the better part of two decades. A little over two years ago, the garage went up for sale.
Ashley Golden and his wife Carolina Vargas had been looking to buy a garage for a number of years. Ashley’s job as an industrial mechanic working on large litho presses in Montreal was very demanding. When large presses go down, money is lost, tight schedules are shredded and clients aren’t happy. Keeping the presses in working order is a 24 hour-per-day occupation.
Ashley loved working on cars and considered owning and running a garage as a first step towards retirement. The thought of starting at 8 a.m. and calling it a day at 6 was very appealing. But it couldn’t be just any garage in any location.
They were looking for a garage outside Montreal in a downtown location, with a good reputation and an established clientele. Their search ended in Ottawa when Spark, a garage with many years of glowing reports from satisfied customers, came up for sale. The four-bay garage came equipped with a team of mechanics who started out as Ashley’s employees but whom he now considers his friends.
Like most small businesses, Spark has been hard hit by the COVID shutdown. According to Carolina, people coming in to work in nearby office towers and businesses accounts for 60% of their business, so the fact that people have not been driving into work in the neighbourhood for more than a year now has been very hard.
Even now, as the garage is heading into what is normally a very busy period when people change their tires from winter to summer, there is a great deal of uncertainty. A tire change often involves other regular maintenance such as oil changes, brake inspections, new tire sales and so on. In anticipation of pothole season, one of the bays has been converted to a wheel-alignment station. All that remains to be seen is how many customers will return this year.
Two years into the first phase of his pre-retirement, I ask Ashley if he had to do it over again, would he make the same decision.
After a short pause to reflect, he says, “Yes”. But clearly, he is anticipating a return to normal and not a repeat of this past year.
Does he have any advice for young people thinking of following their love for cars and becoming car mechanics?
“Study!” he says. Cars are becoming more complicated and harder to fix every year. Diagnosing problems might be somewhat easier with the new diagnostic tools and computers to point to parts that are failing, but fixing cars is becoming harder. Knowing that a certain sensor is acting up is only a small part of the job. Knowing whether it is critical that the sensor be replaced immediately, knowing where the sensor is located, how to replace it, and whether other sensors or components should be replaced at the same time to prevent further problems are equally important.
New cars are relying on computers and sensors more than ever before. “Gone are the days,” says Ashley, “when a young person could just walk into a garage and apprentice as a mechanic. As we transition from ever more complicated internal combustion motors to hybrids and electric cars, you have to learn about how the many modules interact and control how a car functions. For that you have to go to school.”
Each year, a mechanic from Spark attends specialist courses at Algonquin College.
Spark offers service in English, French and Spanish. But Ashley and Carolina know that the most important language is the multilingual smile of a satisfied customer and the sound a smoothly running car makes when it leaves the garage. You can check out the services provided and the latest specials at sparkautorepairs.com