Cobbler Leonard Legare fixing up a pair of shoes the Cobbler's Rack Shoes and Repairs.
Image Credit: Cobbler's Rack Shoes and Repairs
September 29, 2024 - 7:00 AM
People travel from Penticton, Kamloops, Salmon Arm and beyond to a cobbler in Vernon to get their shoes fixed.
Cobbler’s Rack Shoes and Repairs is one of the last shops of its kind in the Okanagan, and they’ll fix just about anything from shoes to hockey gear to strollers and more.
Maggie Niewinski moved to Canada from Poland in 1985 and opened the Vernon shop with co-owner Leonard Legare.
Legare handles the shoe repair and Niewinski uses her background in textiles to tackle the unique challenges that come through their doors.
“We do fix something that somebody is really attached to. A purse that somebody received as a gift from a mother who died so there's a lot of things that have sentimental value. A lot of things that people just want to save money, somebody paid $600 for boots and they're going to pay $200 to replace the soles. It definitely saves them $400,” she said.
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Niewinski has fixed century-old violin cases, horse blankets, hockey skates and other oddities beyond counting.
“We evolve with whatever people bring in,” she said. “They don't know what to do with it, where to bring it and they're just bringing it here and begging us to fix it.”
Niewinski said her partnership with Legare has made the shop into something different than the average cobbler.
"Most of them look like just a little hole in the wall,“ she said. "Leonard, the cobbler, he takes care of the back but I'm artistic, and I bring this side of me up front and we have beautiful European shoes and the store looks really nice.”
She said there are no more schools teaching the trade so people have to learn on the job.
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“It takes at least a couple of years to learn,” she said. “We are actually training somebody right now, and hopefully he's going to stay because we did train a guy, he stayed for a year and he quit."
She sees a future where it’s nearly impossible to find someone who can fix shoes.
“They're just going to have to throw them out because nobody's going to be there to fix them,” she said.
Cobbler’s Rack plans on being in business for a long time, and Niewinski loves the work.
“Every repair is different, you actually have to be very innovative. You look at the repair and you have to find a way to fix it,” she said. “It's challenging and I like the challenge.”
Go here to visit Cobbler's Rack website.
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