Some time ago, I decided to repair a door handle inside our house. (This sort of thing happens when I suffer writer’s block and need a short-term distraction.) So, I went to local big box stores looking for the correct hardware.
The only replacements they offered were huge new assemblies wrapped in that impregnable plastic. And, even if I could cut open the package, there was no guarantee the new assembly would fit my door.
“Ed’s,” I suddenly remembered. “Ed’s Hardware in Stouffville. That’s where I’ll go.” I made an appointment to see Ed Casella, drove down to meet him at his farm, and it was all I could do to keep from buying every old piece of hardware in the place – antique doorknobs, padlocks, floor grates and everything else under the sun … from a bygone era.
That got me thinking about the many former suppliers and servicepeople who’ve gone the way of the Dodo bird. There aren’t the number of tradespeople out there there once were. I remember when we hired a local mason with a knack for floor redesign; somehow his eye made all the difference.
Finding a small appliance or machine repair service specialist has become harder too. It’s the same for companies and service outlets looking for qualified millwrights, cooks, electricians, framers, plasterers and cabinet-makers.
A recent Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) report in 2022 showed that small Canadian firms lost $38 billion in business opportunities due to labour shortages.
“It’s a bad time to be a consumer if you want anything that involves a tradesperson,” one construction company executive told the CBC this spring.
My neighbour and I got talking about the people who used to collect scrap metal. He pointed out how lucrative retrieving copper, steel, even aluminum can be. Next, we talked about those kinds of street tradespeople no longer around. He recalled a firm that used to haul ice out of Lake Simcoe in the winter and then kept the blocks of ice from freezing until the next summer by insulating them under tonnes of sawdust.
We have a photo in our house showing members of my wife’s family patting the horse that pulled the milkman’s wagon delivering fresh milk and cream on her street back in the 1950s.
Oh, and remember when – in the middle of a summer day – you heard the rhythmic cling-clang of the man pulling a small cart with the stone to sharpen your kitchen and garden utensils?
It’s exactly nine years ago now; one early-August day in 2015, I saw John Zentana passing on the street. He was ringing that familiar bell out the side of his van. I flagged him down and invited my granddaughter to watch something she might never see again – a master tool sharpener at work before her very eyes.
While Mr. Zentana sharpened a couple of garden clipper blades for me, I interviewed him. When he arrived in Canada from Italy back in 1955, he said, John was only 18. He didn’t speak a word of English, and his skills were few; he’d learned to sharpen knives so his father could butcher what livestock the family had raised for their dinner table.
At that time, Toronto was booming with expansion, growth and optimism. And skilled workers were scarce. So, John and his family learned construction. They taught themselves to frame buildings, lay bricks, erect drywall and paint it to builders’ specifications. They learned carpentry, plumbing, electrical and sheet metal work.
And it kept the Zentana family at work for a lifetime. The next time John lifted his head he’d retired, and it was 2003.
“But I wasn’t going to sit around on the front step,” he told me. “I could still sharpen tools, like I did for my father as a kid.”
So, for another dozen years, John Zentana had driven the streets of villages and towns around the GTA, clanging a bell on the side of his Chevy Ventura until people like me stopped him to have him sharpen an axe, garden clippers, scissors, you name it.
And it didn’t take him long to sharpen my tools. When he was done, he bent over the grass in our front yard and snipped the blades like they were nothing. “Just like new,” he said.
“Better!” I said.
By the way, suffering another bout of writer’s block recently, I decided to repair another piece broken hardware in our house. Knowing I had to make an appointment with my reliable contact, Ed Casella, down the road, I called