For nearly six decades, Myrna Boyle has been bent over her Adler industrial sewing machine, stitching together leather straps and damaged suitcases, or at a time-worn workbench mending ripped vinyl and cracked plastics or fixing wonky wheels and handles on every kind of luggage you can imagine.
But at 81, the owner of Godfrey’s Luggage and Repairs on Douglas Street is calling it a career.
Boyle, who runs the only purely dedicated luggage repair shop on the Island, is a rare craftswoman in an age when bags, suitcases, wallets and briefcases — even golf bags — are made cheaply and easy to throw away and buy new again.
The farm girl from Biggar, Sask., was in her 20s when she went to work for Richard Godfrey in his downtown shop. When Godfrey died suddenly in 1975, she bought the shop and continued the tradition.
But that’s coming to an end. “I’m tired and my back is too sore,” Boyle said Friday as she finished the last of her repairs and started cleaning out the shop in the historic Leland Building near Bay Street, which had been a dentist’s office when she moved from downtown in 1988.
“But I will miss doing this and I will miss so many of the customers I’ve had over the years. I can’t even begin to guess how many.”
At her peak, Boyle was fixing up to 20 pieces a day. She had contracts with Air Canada and WestJet, which repaired customers’ damaged luggage, as well as local airlines and bus companies like Greyhound. She also sold luggage and leather products, though the retail line fell away in recent years and the focus turned to repairs.
On Friday, Aaron Walker-Duncan, who works for the B.C. Pension Corp., picked up his brown leather briefcase from Godfrey’s. A clasp had broken on the strap, and Boyle fixed it for him.
“I’ve been driving by so many times over the years and I decided finally to stop in,” he said. “I guess I could have just ordered another one from Amazon, but today everything is so disposable.”
The repair took a few weeks and cost $15. “It’s great there was a place like this to fix these things. It’s really too bad she’s closing,” Walker-Duncan said.
Former Green Party leader and University of Victoria professor Andrew Weaver is a regular customer and admired Boyle for her personal service — no website, just a landline and handwritten receipts — and for her ability to fix items that few could, including retractable extended handles on carry-on luggage.
“I’m so sad she’s closing, ” said Weaver. “I don’t think a lot of people realized what a gem we really had with Mrs. Boyle.”
Weaver said he once asked Boyle if she had ever found anything interesting in the bags people bring in to be fixed. “Without missing a beat, she laughed and described the rather intimate toy she once found in a bag brought in by a rather demure lady,” said Weaver.
Boyle said with a smile: “Oh, I didn’t say anything. I just discretely put it in one of the pockets.
“I’ve found notebooks and other things, but I just leave them in the bags.”
Boyle said she always loved the repair work because it was often challenging.
Godfrey had been making leather police-badge wallets for local forces in the early 1970s, but when he died suddenly, it was up to Boyle to sew dozens more. She learned quickly how to adapt to new leather products and make interesting repairs.
“I was young and I was very daring,” said Boyle. “I just figured things out.”
She said she learned a lot from her father, Otto Erikson, a Danish immigrant who raised five girls on a grain and cattle and sheep farm in West Central Saskatchewan. “I was the youngest and the last of the line … my dad was hoping for a boy to help on the farm,” she said.
Boyle did help, though, along with her sisters, as the farm work required a family effort. “In those days you had to make do with what you had. You couldn’t always just go out and buy something new when it was broken. You made the effort to fix things.”
Boyle prided herself in doing quality work. “My dad always taught me that if you can’t do a really good job, then you shouldn’t be doing it at all,” she said. “I always remembered that.”
Long-time friend Rachel White has been assisting Boyle over the past two decades and was there Friday helping to clean out her shop. The business itself is up for sale at $15,000 and there’s a hope someone might carry it on, said White.
White said Boyle has mobility issues and it’s time she takes a well-deserved rest. “She’s an amazing person … I’ve always really admired her. I live upstairs so we help each other out.”
Boyle’s husband, Paul, a marine engineer, died several years ago and White said it’s time she enjoyed retirement.
White said there are plans to fix up her apartment deck with flowers and plants, so she can enjoy a home life that’s richly deserved, and watch her favourite TV shows about nature.
