The Dealership without Dad #

After the funeral, Mom and I decided to take our Germany guests onto the trip that Dad had promised them. Going to Jasper and then on to Banff and stopping along the way to see things like the Glaciers and the frozen waterfalls. Although I have been to both of these places many times and one time made a trip the other way around with my cousin Brian, I had never been there in the winter and it was interesting to see. Our young friends even went on a dog sled ride while we were in Banff.

Not long after we buried Dad we got notification from Nissan that they were taking our franchise away because Dad was a 75% owner. This happened on April 1, 1993 like an April Fools Day joke, but it was no joke. This was really just a lame excuse for Nissan to cater to the Edmonton franchises, specifically Erickson who were losing sales to our little store in Barrhead. Rodney and Uncle Leo were not ready to shut the whole thing down, as we had a really nice showroom so they went shopping for a new franchise and they came home with Hyundai.

These cars did not sell nearly as well and we didn’t have the same enthusiasm as we did when we were selling Nissans. When we were selling Nissans we knew we were selling a superior product and when selling Hyundai we were trying to convince ourselves that we were selling a great product. Deep down we were still Nissan loyal but had no franchise.

Mom received a nice chunk of change from an insurance policy and part of that money was used to help finance my return to Grant MacEwan but this time as a MicroComputer Specialist. This was a two year program that spent more time on the hardware and network side of computing. I was convinced at that time that there wouldn’t be much of a need for programers because it was pretty simple and really almost anyone could do this. Had I known that I was this wrong I might have gone to NAIT instead which had a program that focused more on the programming side of things.

Rodney and Uncle Leo (who became a major investor and backing Rodney on this new phase of the business) continued to run the store for a few more years before they decided to shut it down, auction off what they could and find a client to lease the building. Debits were settled and Goodyear moved in as the tenant and Rodney eventually moved his family to an acreage between Spruce Grove and Stony Plain.