By Jodie Sinnema
The dying craft of cuckoo clock repair isn’t going to the birds just yet, thanks to the owners of the Cuckoo Clock Shop on Bank Street near Somerset.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a booming business.
“Everything is going into electronics,” says John Kolman, 67, one of the three German-born owners of the store.
He says young people aren’t interested in learning the trade of repairing wind-up clocks.
“They are all just tinkerers. They play a little with the clocks and that’s it. A real clockmaker takes everything apart and starts from scratch.”
Every inch of wall space is covered with clocks: Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh clocks, hologram clocks with Jesus or the Virgin Mary peering out.
But this shop’s claim to fame is its cuckoo clock collection.
On every hour and half-hour, cuckoo birds peak out of their holes, folk dancers swing to the music of the Alps, water wheels turn and tiny blacksmiths bang with their hammers.
Manfred Treineis, the master clock-man of the business, has made several trips back to Germany to hone his skills at clock factories.
The Cuckoo Clock Shop is known nationally and has sold cuckoo clocks to people from as far away as Whitehorse, Yukon.
“Dying art is the most horrible phrase we hear,” says James Lubic, executive director of the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute in Ohio. “People in the clockmaking industry are definitely dying faster than they are being replaced.”
He says the average age of clockmakers is 62. The three owners of the Cuckoo Clock Shop are all in their 60s, though none are ready for retirement. When they are, says Kolman, they might have to shut down the 31-year-old business.
There used to be clock and watch schools in Red Deer, Alta., and at Toronto’s George Brown College, but both have closed, leaving Trois Rivières, Quebec, as the only Canadian city where someone can learn the craft at a CEGEP.
“We’re in a throw-away society,” says Ed Baraniuk, president of the Calgary watch and clock club.
“Old people are too meticulous and too particular.” Quartz and electronic clocks make sense in today’s world, he says.
Kolman admits that the clockmaking and clock-repair business hasn’t led him to riches. He says the business has avoided bankruptcy because the three owners have stuck together —living together on an acreage outside of Ottawa.
And the sound of the cuckoo bird doesn’t come cheap. The imports from Germany range from $200 to $1,000 and one clock — hand-carved out of wood from the Black Forest in Germany — rings in at $15,000.
“If you hear a cuckoo bird in the forest,” says Kolman in his thick German accent, “you touch your wallet and you’ll have money in your pocket year-round.”
“I love the job,” he says, after pointing out the bellows, gears, music box and wires in the back of a cuckoo clock.
“Some people come into the store and say I should be a millionaire. I say, I’m healthy. I can work. I am a millionaire.”
Whether it takes Kolman two weeks or six months to repair a 300-year-old clock, he says it’s all worth it to him.
“We have no time in this store. We only have clocks.”