Business keeps on ticking

Business keeps on ticking .Dan Hooper is a clock doctor who makes house calls. I suppose you could call him a clock specialist. After six years training as a clock and watchmaker in Ontario, he took 11 months post-grad training on a scholarship to Neuchatel, Switzerland, the capital of the clock-making world.

Now he spends his days adjusting, cleaning and repairing clocks and watches from all over Ontario in his clock hospital at Hoopers Jewellry Store in downtown Bowmanville, about 50 km east of Toronto. Many of his evenings are devoted to house calls, tending to big grandfather clocks in country homes from Kingston to Niagara.

He even has a clock ambulance, a van with foam-rubber fittings in which he can transport critically ill Grandfather clocks for repairs in his shop where he makes parts that aren't easily obtainable from factories.

From Dan I learned that clock sales are booming in Canada but every year there are fewer and fewer repair technicians. The last course to train them in Canada -- at George Brown College in Toronto -- closed its doors a few years ago.

Meanwhile the demand for clocks, particularly big Grandfather clocks, is growing as exurbanites fill up the Ontario countryside with big houses that seem to demand important-looking clocks for their front halls.

Dan Hooper grew up in a clock-making family. His father, Art, was a watchmaker and instrument mechanic for the Canadian Army and later in private practice. Dan, after graduating from Bowmanville high school, served an apprenticeship with his father and took the four-year course at George Brown. After returning from studies in Switzerland, he worked for his father and other watchmakers and for a time travelled for the Canadian government to Ontario towns where he cleaned and cared for huge old weight-driven clocks in post office towers.

From the Clock and Watch Corner of the Hooper Jewellry Store -- reputed to be the oldest east of Yonge St. in Ontario -- he now sells as well as repairs many new and used clocks and watches. Television's Antiques Road Show has recently focused a lot of attention on old clocks, he says.

Every year, the store sells 12 or more used or new Grandfather clocks for $2,500 to $3,000. Most of the new ones come from factories in Waterloo, Ont., or Zeeland, Mich. Big ornate cuckoo clocks are also favourites, the new ones powered by batteries, the older ones by weights. For bigger clocks such as Grandfathers, weights are preferred because they provide a constant power source. Spring-driven clocks tend to lose power and get slower as springs run down. That's why so-called eight-day clocks really need to be wound every four days to keep them accurate ....

Visit our online site for a great selection of grandfather clocks .