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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When Ron Guibeault and his wife Joan moved to Yellowknife in the winter of 1971, they were only planning on being in the North for a few years.

Ron Guibeault and his family have been running Ron's Auto Service and Equipment Rentals Ltd. for 40 years. - Laura Busch/NNSL photo

"Our plan was just a couple of years to make a bunch of money and leave," said Guibeault, laughing about the way things turned out.

Since then, Guibeault's views have changed. He has become an advocate for Northern-based business and an avid supporter of Yellowknife community groups, sports teams and the annual Snowking Festival. He is also an open critic of companies who make their money in the North but fail to spread that wealth around.

"Why be like that? Because the south takes a lot from the Northwest Territories and we don't get nothing back privately," he said, adding that mining companies by and large are a notable exception to that rule.

Guibeault, a licensed mechanic, took a job at Yellowknife Motors when the Guibeaults first came to Yellowknife. Their first Yellowknife home, using that term loosely, was a room in a motel on Franklin Avenue down the hill toward Old Town – one of many buildings that has been torn down and replaced since that time.

Joan, who was pregnant when they made the move, remembers that first winter as long and cold, saying that temperatures would dip to -40 C for weeks at a time.

"I remember it was so cold, I took a two litre of pop and set it by the door (of the motel room). In the morning, it was frozen," she said.

After a year at Yellowknife Motors, Ron quit and struck out on his own, starting the first Ron's Auto Service on Franklin Avenue where the Vietnamese Noodle House stands today. That first shop was a small, two-stall service garage with a gas station. The business stayed there from seven years until the landlord asked them to leave because a taxi company said it would pay more to rent the space.

Ron then applied to the government for a loan to build his own shop, which was up and running by 1978. Ron's Auto Service on Woolgar Avenue became a staple Yellowknife business in the years that followed, renting out small and then eventually heavy equipment, as well as servicing vehicles and heavy machinery.

During the early years, Ron knew most customers by name and they were friends as well as clients, he said. In the late 1990s, around the time when diamond mines picked up where the former gold mines left off, the city's population boomed and gradually fewer and fewer faces that passed him by on the sidewalk were familiar.

However, this boom was good for Northern business, he insists, which had been up and down for decades. Since the diamond mines were established, business has been steadily increasing, said Ron. So much so that Ron's Auto moved to a new, larger location in Kam Lake five years ago.

When Yellowknifer visited the Guibeaults at this location last week, a large muskox hide hung behind him on the wall. When asked how he came into such an item, Ron chuckled, saying he has had the hide for years but was never allowed to display it at home so it found its way into the boardroom of the new shop.

People used to give him all kinds of things during the early years as down payments for snowmobiles, he said. Along with the muskox hide, Ron's Auto has accepted polar bear hides, two wolf hides and many other items in lieu of cash, he said.

Back in 1971, Yellowknife was a smaller, closer-knit city with two grocery stores and the same number of hardware stores, said the Guibeaults.

Joan said they had to become accustomed to the shortages of goods that inevitably accompanied ferry closures during break-up and freeze-up. She learned to freeze milk and eggs to avoid the steep markup on perishable products that time of year.

When they moved into a trailer in Northland Trailer Park in 1972, the area was considered the edge of town. Old Airport Road was a narrow street lined by deep ditches with only a handful of businesses.

"The people who were starting businesses here and building them up worked very hard for the people in Yellowknife, to make sure that they had the stuff that they required," said Ron. "And it's getting better."

There is no doubt that Ron's Auto is a family business. Not only did Ron recruit his sister Rita to move North to help with the business, both of the Guibeaults' sons trained to become licensed mechanics and now each run a section of the business. Gordon, born in 1971, is now in charge of the rental department and has added a third generation to the Yellowknife Guibeault brood with his three children, Phillip, 16, Tanner, 15, and Taylin, 11. Brent, born in 1974 is in charge of parts and sales and is expecting his first child late next month.

When asked if he is considering handing the business over to his sons and taking more time off, Ron, who still puts in long hours in the shop every week, said he doesn't feel ready to retire, but has been thinking about slowing down a little bit.

"I'll believe that when I see it," said Joan in response.

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