From Overtime: Portraits of a Vanishing Canada by Karl Kessler and Sunshine Chen. Published by Porcupine’s Quill in 2018.
Joe Kelly, Town Clock Keeper It actually is something beating inside this building, keeping it alive …
The bell strikes eleven and the tower reverberates. Joe winds the bell, then the movement: sixty-four turns of the crank each. He is breathing quickly, smiling. “We worry so much about tomorrow, but we should just live in today,” he says. “Today is precious.”
Michael Fritsch, Fritsch Fragrances It’s the cheapest stuff I sell … It’s probably my best seller, too …
He says his customers now are “few and far between” and that most of them come in “because they can’t find what they want somewhere else”, but their perseverance is not surprising to him. He has seen what a particular perfume can mean to someone. “Women come in, and their mother, or their aunt, or their grandmother used to wear a fragrance, and they pick it up for her,” he says. “Scent is a great memory.”
Manfred Aulich, Typewriter Mechanic I will sell this machine … Somebody’s going to get lucky and get a really, really nice typewriter …
Manfred is also one of the last people around who services mechanical cheque writers and he can order new typewriters, which are still being manufactured. “I can’t believe I’m still doing typewriters,” he says. “Everything is for a time in life, right? And typewriters had their time, and they still have some time left.”