Growing up on a farm in Rhodesia, Neville Tebbit (pictured below at right, with fellow volunteer Jurgen), often helped his Dad fix things. “I would take things apart and wanted to know how they worked,” he recalls. As a teen, he completely rebuilt a “rust-bucket” 1966 Jaguar. These days, Neville, whose professional job involves servicing xray spectrometers used in mining and other sectors, is contributing his fix-it savvy to the SIRCH Repair Café in Haliburton, Ontario.

Neville, it looks like you have taken apart a toaster. Can you tell us how you are repairing it?

The problem is with the plug. We don’t have a new plug, but we are repurposing a good one from a non-repairable coffee maker. The connection needs to be soldered and then we can put the toaster back together and test it.

Do you have a philosophy about fixing broken things?

When something is broken, I feel its pain. I want to jump in there and make it feel good again. That makes me happy, especially when I can make a good repair without spending money. New parts to repair something can often exceed the cost of the entire item, so I often try to find a good used part that will do the job. That is the challenge and joy of it.

What do you enjoy most about your role at the Repair Café? How do you see the future of this concept?

The community feeling here is great. But also, our ability to change mindsets. Our society has reached a point where in many cases it is harder to fix things. For example, sometimes manufacturers may prevent us from fixing their products.

We have all heard of the concept of a disposable society. We have to push back against that thinking and promote the right to repair.

About 15 minutes later, Neville’s repair is almost complete. He carefully re-assembles the older Proctor-Silex toaster in its white casing and re-installs the knobs on the control switches. He tests it — and the repaired toaster works like a charm. Its owner (pictured above) is happy to have it back in working order, and SIRCH Community Services will receive a donation to support its work benefiting the Haliburton community.

Both Neville and his wife Zena are dedicated volunteers at the Repair Cafe. Zena was busy today registering guests and connecting them with the volunteer fixers. They made the drive north from the city early this morning to join a volunteer team fixing dozens of items ranging from small appliances, electronics, clothing, ceramics and more.

Toss it? No way!

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The final 2024 SIRCH Repair Cafe was held in November — Neville, Zena and their fellow volunteers will be back when the event starts up again in spring 2025. For more on SIRCH Community Services and its Repair Cafe, please visit sirch.on.ca