Skip to content

We can fix it!

Fix-It Café volunteers drive repair revolution

Recently, a friend came to St. Albert mechanical engineer Darcy Lafleur with a problem: a busted pressure cooker. It used to work, but now all it did was beep and flash an error code on its display when he plugged it in.

“He said, 'If you can fix it, it’s yours,'” Lafleur said.

That’s why Lafleur was crowded around the broken pot with a couple of other handymen last Wednesday, Jan. 8, at Sturgeon Valley Baptist Church. They were there to fix stuff – for free – as part of the St. Albert Tool Library’s monthly Fix-It Café.

Tool library founder Bridget Reschke said she came across the idea for the cafés while researching the tool library, which was meant to help draw neighbours together. The cafés, which started in 2018, see guests bring in broken items for skilled volunteers to try and fix free of charge, often using resources from the tool library, and typically happen on the second Wednesday of each month.

“We’re showing people how to repair items, which is a lost art in our world,” she said.

St. Albert residents throw some 8,137 tonnes of waste into their brown carts each year, reports the City of St. Albert. That works out to about 123 kg per person – a long way from the city's goal of 105, which it's supposed to reach this year. In addition to recycling, St. Albert can reduce its waste by repairing worn or broken clothes, iPhones and other consumer goods so they can be reused.

Canadians live in a very disposable culture nowadays that often throws out expensive goods that could still be used with a simple fix, Reschke said. The fix-it café aims to keep that waste out of the dump and pass valuable repair skills down to today’s generations.

Meet the fixers (and fixee)

Reschke said she typically has about five volunteer fixers come to a café, each with different skills. Some specialize in sewing, jewelry, bicycles or woodworking, while others are general tinkerers. (One volunteer actually trained to fix typewriters.) Each sets up a station at a table and works with any guest that brings in items to be repaired.

They usually get about 10 guests per meeting, but the only one with items to fix at this month’s event was Leah Taylor – a long-time St. Albert resident who’s come to every café since the group started.

“I hate throwing anything out,” said the Saskatchewan native.

“I’m old school.”

Taylor said she typically brings clothes to patch, knives and garden shears to sharpen, little electronic items she has lying around the house, and often homemade snacks for the fixers. This month, she had a set of ripped long-johns, a torn pillow and a non-functioning calculator, the latter of which a fixer soon determined had a dead battery. (She decided to give the calculator to Reschke.)

“For me, it’s the economics,” Taylor said of her regular attendance – she’s a senior on a fixed income, and fixing items saves money. It also helps keep more trash out of the landfill.

Sewer Gisele Gobeil was using a sewing machine on a rip in a thick coat another fixer brought in. She said she learned to sew from her grandmother and kept up her skills in school and as a mother of two, sewing and patching clothes for her sons.

“I’ve been fortunate enough over my lifetime so far to gather these skills,” she said, and she enjoyed the chance to share them with others through the café.

Australian millwright Brenton Crow specialized in appliances and electronics at the café, and said guests often brought him speakers and DVD players to examine.

“Every man should know how to fix something at a basic level,” he said, adding he used to buy, fix and resell old washing machines he’d find on Craigslist-like sites back in Australia.

Fellow appliance fixer and St. Albert engineer Mike Taylor said he used to buy, dismantle and throw out old lawnmowers just to see how they work.

“How people figure out how to make stuff and how to make stuff work is really intriguing, and you never really get to see how they do it until you take (something) apart.”

Lafleur said he joined the café after having borrowed some tools from the tool library, having learned the art of appliance repair through the time-honoured technique of breaking a lot of stuff.

“The mentality is: if someone else can fix it, so can I.”

Fixing more than just stuff

Lafleur and his cohorts soon had the bottom of the cooker unscrewed and were poking its different wires with a voltmeter to see which did what.

“We’re pretty puzzled,” he said – there’s no obvious problem here, and he’ll probably have to do more research online.

Most repair jobs start with a conversation with the client, Mike and Crow said. You want to learn as much about the item and its problem as possible, especially if it’s of personal significance to the owner.

“Diagnosis is always the hardest,” Lafleur said, as there are so many things that can go wrong with an appliance and so many diagnostic tools you can use. Websites and YouTube videos can help – he found a manual for his pressure cooker online that suggested it likely had some sort of electrical short in a sensor, for example.

Mike said he sees a lot of power supply issues at the café, as well as simple fixes such as broken wires or parts. Some of their more senior clients know how to fix an item, but no longer have the eyesight or dexterity to do it themselves. If he and the fixers can’t repair an item, they can often at least tell a person more about how it works.

Crow said that was the case with an old radio a young girl brought him during one recent café event. It turned out to be irreparable, but she was still completely absorbed in the process of watching him dismantle and diagnose it.

“She didn’t care if it worked again. The experience was in seeing it come apart.”

The main goal of a fix-it café isn’t necessarily to fix things, but to show people that things can be fixed and encourage them to try doing so themselves, Crow and Mike said. If enough people start fixing things instead of buying new ones, that could create demand for right-to-repair legislation (which require companies to allow anyone, not just their own employees, to fix their products) and replacement parts, and move us away from today’s throwaway mentality to consumer goods.

“It can actually change the way things are manufactured,” Crow said.

Fixing your own stuff can save you money. Reschke said café volunteers once repaired a $300 pair of headphones in 20 minutes and a silver heirloom teapot in 10. The owner of that teapot gave the volunteers a $20 tip, as a commercial repairperson told her it would cost $80 to mend.

It can also preserve memories. Gobeil said one old couple asked her to mend a blanket that they planned to donate to a museum in Europe, while another woman has brought in the same pair of garden pants three times.

“She says, ‘They’re my most comfortable garden pants and I don’t want to give them up.’”

Many fixers at the café said they volunteered there to meet new people and give back to their communities. Lafleur said he feels a sense of accomplishment whenever he’s able to repair an item.

“It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, it feels good.”

Lafleur put his odds of getting his friend’s pressure cooker working again at 20 per cent, but planned to keep at it.

“It’s in really good condition. It would be a shame to just toss it out.”

The next Fix-It Café is Feb. 12 at Sturgeon Valley Baptist Church. Visit www.satls.org for details.


Kevin Ma

About the Author: Kevin Ma

Kevin Ma joined the St. Albert Gazette in 2006. He writes about Sturgeon County, education, the environment, agriculture, science and aboriginal affairs. He also contributes features, photographs and video.
Read more



Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks