In Canada today, it seems that nearly everything is migrating into the digital realm. From banking to news, vehicles and appliances, there’s always a process to be automated or a cumbersome paper trail to be moved to a Google storage facility.
In the midst of all this silicon and processing power, it’s refreshing to meet someone who exclusively does things the old-school way. Someone like Ovila Saucier.
Saucier, at nearly 90 years-young, has finally decided that it’s time to take step back after 60 years running his electrical company Saucier Electric.
“At that age, it’s time to take my retirement,” he said with a laugh.
Though he curently resides in Luskville, Saucier is originally from the Gaspé region, and he fell into his trade quite quickly.
He grew up working from an early age, as was common at the time, in a house with no electricity. In the early 1940s, when he was a young buck of 14, Saucier decided he would remedy the situation himself and set off for the bush to earn some money. He returned and paid $90 to have the house connected to the grid.

“I took the money and I paid for the electricity,” he said. “The guy, when he came to our house, he needed somebody to get the tape and hook up the wires. I said, ‘Well, I like that job.’”
“That’s when it all started, when this guy came to his mom’s place and had him pulling wire,” added Saucier’s daughter Carmen.
From the east coast of Quebec, Ovila travelled north in 1943 and found work in the mines around Amos and Abitibi.
He picked up some electrical training at a hospital and started working at the Noranda Mine in 1949. It was also the year that he married his wife Irène Nobert. The pair will celebrate their 69th anniversary in October.
“It’s a tough job,” he said of the mines, adding that he managed to pick up a wide variety of skills, in addition to electrical experience. “I did everything underground.”
In 1956, he started at the mine in Bristol. It was around this time that he began studying for his Master Electrician certification.
“He only has his grade five, so he learned everything from reading,” Carmen explained. “He read, read, read, and never went to school to [become an electrician]. He learned on his own. He doesn’t use computers, everything is by hand.”
In 1958, he got his Master certificate and shortly left the mine to pursue other electrical jobs with his newly formed company. Working with his brother-in-law, Yvon Nobert, Ovila said that they tackled just about every type of job they could, from residential to commercial and industrial. Currently, Ovila refers any work inquiries to his nephew Jean Nobert, whom he worked with for close to a quarter century.
For a time, Ovila even had a job monitoring the transformers at around 20 government buildings in Ottawa and Gatineau.
Nowadays, he contents himself by indulging in his other hands-on hobbies of old cars and accordion music. A player since the age of seven, Ovila was even in a band for a time and toured around Canada, the U.S. and beyond.
“I played music all my life, all over the place,” he said.
One story that stood out in his memory occurred on one such trip with the band. Ovila was on a flight from Toronto, hanging around the front of the plane and struck up a conversation with the pilots.
“I talked with the guys, told them I am going to Winnipeg, and we’re musicians,” he said.
After some deliberation, Ovila invited his fiddle player up to join them and they managed to put on an impromptu set in the cockpit for the rest of the passengers.
“The guy was playing and the [pilot] opened the mic,” he said with a grin. “That was the best time.”
In his house in Luskville, there is a monstrous log table that Ovila chopped down himself. He also hewed the beams that make up the structure of the building. His walls are adorned with pictures of classic cars, of which he had a substantial collection.
Everything about the man gives off the aura of an era where some common sense and a little elbow grease was enough to fix nearly anything. Instead of the cheap goods and instantaneous service we’ve become dependent on, people had to rely on their own head and hands.
Though Ovila’s tools will soon be up for sale, he looked back fondly on his career as an electrician, especially the folks he met along the way.
“I love people and did a good job for the people,” he said simply. “That’s how I did all my life.”