Years ago, you would actually fix things

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A newcomer to Brockville’s downtown might have easily missed Vijay Beri’s small electronics repair shop.

Electric Appliance Service is nestled in what might otherwise be a home at the foot of Park Street – not likely a spot where city hall would allow a business today.

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But things were different in the late 1960s.

“We used to be across the road,” Beri, 75, said Thursday, noting the first shop opened in 1967, before he moved across Park Street in 1975.

That will change after today, when Beri closes up the shop and retires.

It’s been a fascinating five-decade trajectory for Beri, who came to Brockville from Nairobi, Kenya, in the 1960s.

Back in Kenya, he fixed the totalizers on gasoline pumps (the calibration part that matched the gasoline used with the price charged). Beri recalls being the youngest person, at that time and place, to have a licence to open up gas pumps.

But that line of work was not available to him in Canada.

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Beri eventually ended up working for Edward Hughes at the appliance repair shop, as a technician, before taking over the business two years later.

“I loved it,” he said.

“Ever since when I was a kid, it was my hobby, kind of taking things apart and fixing them.”

His education left him with a diploma in technical services, for electronics, in Kenya, he noted.

“TVs, they were just coming into the market at that time,” recalled Beri.

At the shop, he started with small appliances, before moving up to larger ones such as stoves and refrigerators. Eventually, he worked for restaurants.

“I did a lot of work for Tim Hortons, in Brockville and Prescott and Highway 401.”

Beri has seen downtown Brockville change over those decades, but more significant to him has been the change in people’s consumption habits and expectations.

To put it briefly: People aren’t actually interested in fixing things anymore, in particular circuit boards.

That has resulted in a sharp drop in the number small appliances he is called upon to fix.

Years ago, he would get 500 to 600 small appliances to repair in a month.

“We hardly see one now a month.”

In the past, timers were all mechanical, he noted. Then came the advancement of electronics.

But nowadays, said Beri, it’s “throw away the board, put in a new board and you’re done.”

“Years ago, you physically fixed the existing board,” said Beri.

“Now, you don’t hardly use any brain.”

The reason is that customers don’t have the patience – or the willingness to pay for the longer labour hours – required to fix a damaged printed circuit board rather than simply throwing it out, said Beri.

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While time has taken away the thrill of opening things up and fixing what is wrong with them, it’s also left Beri feeling the weight of the heavier appliances he must pick up, so he figured the time is right to retire.

He and his wife, Usha, have two daughters, and now, one granddaughter, and Beri is looking forward to spending more time with them.

But it’s hard not to see his departure from his humble downtown shop as the passing of an age, a time when handiwork and attention to detail were more important than mass production and just-in-time delivery.

Still, while Beri is retiring, chances are he won’t resist the opportunity to tinker with the odd piece of broken electronics here and there.

(City hall reporter Ronald Zajac can be reached at Rzajac@postmedia.com.)