BCAA

Greg Gjerdingen (Rambler), George Wright (Amy White) SUMMER 2017 BCA A .COM 29 Gearheads of BCAA Auto Service Centre experts reveal how they discovered their passion for cars BY IAN MacNEILL (top left) Service tech Dan MacInnes assists a customer; (left) a 1965 Rambler Marlin similar to the one MacInnes fixed up for his mother; (above) lube tech Amy White gets to work. Amy White | Lube Technician, Nanaimo Amy White didn't grow up "wrenching," as she puts it. She came to it after a brief foray into electrical work, after which she started investigating other trades – and decided to try her hand at auto repair and maintenance. "I got my first chance when I was hired by a lube shop a few years ago and I just kind of flourished," she says. She adds that her boss was a car buff who taught her a lot about how vehicles worked, as well as how to pull things apart and put them back together again so they not only ran, but ran better. Today she's a lube tech for BCAA, but she has a dream: "I'd love to be a fully certified Red Seal mechanic," she says, adding that she already spends a lot of her day assisting in the shop, learning ever more about automotive tics and troubles, and developing her analytical abilities. "The guys here have been great," she says. "My boss has been really supportive." Plus, she loves the variety: "If I was doing the same thing every day, I'd get bored." Daniel MacInnes | Service Technician, Kelowna Daniel MacInnes was 13 years old when a car slid on some ice in front of his family's home in Edmonton and totalled his mother's '65 Rambler. Because mom knew Daniel and his brother had a love of all things mechanical, she bought the car back after it was written off and the boys went to work. They tinkered and learned, eventually getting it up and running and then selling it, using the money to buy another car. "We'd fix that one up and so on," says MacInnes. He knew early on that being a mechanic was his destiny. "School didn't make a lot of sense to me, but motors did." In 35 years, MacInnes has seen a lot of changes in the industry, watching as mechanics morphed from being "the dirty guys in coveralls" to "highly trained technicians who are constantly learning new skills in order to do an ever more complex job." One thing hasn't changed, however: the satisfaction he gets from being completely engaged in the work he is doing, finding and solving problems, and seeing the look of appreciation on the faces of his customers, "especially when they've been somewhere else already and [the other shop] wasn't able to fix it," he says chuckling. AUTOMOTIVE Gearheads p.29 | Flat Tires p.33

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