Ottawa's Gloucester community is used to seeing lawnmowers, snowblowers and trimmers come and go from Triole Small Engine Sales & Service, but Thursday brought a very different kind of traffic through the front door: a vehicle.
Steve Poirier, general manager of the Gloucester shop, described it as an unusual day at work, to say the least. A vehicle smashed straight into the front of the store, leaving a sizeable hole in the building. Poirier and his team had to keep serving customers while contractors worked to patch up the damage, turning a routine Thursday into an impromptu repair job of their own.
Lawnmowers Taken in the Aftermath
Amid the chaos, two used lawnmowers were stolen from the store. It's not yet clear whether the theft was connected to whoever was driving the vehicle that crashed into the building, or whether opportunists took advantage of the damaged storefront to grab the equipment. Either way, it left staff dealing with both a hole in the wall and a hole in their inventory on the same day.
An Ottawa Small Business Caught Off Guard
For a small, independently run shop like Triole in Gloucester, an incident like this is more than a headline, it's a real disruption. Small engine repair shops across Ottawa rely on foot traffic and walk-in customers dropping off mowers and snowblowers for tune-ups, and a damaged storefront can make a business look closed even when it's very much open. Poirier's decision to keep serving customers while the hole was being fixed says a lot about the resilience small business owners need to show when something like this happens out of nowhere.
Gloucester, in Ottawa's east end, is home to a mix of small retail and service businesses along its commercial strips, many of them long-standing neighbourhood fixtures. Incidents like this are a reminder of how quickly things can go sideways for local shop owners, and how much they depend on their communities to keep showing up while repairs get sorted out.
What's Next
As of Thursday, repairs to the storefront were underway, though details on the cause of the crash and any suspects involved in the lawnmower theft were limited. Ottawa residents who frequent Triole Small Engine Sales & Service, or who may have information about the incident, are encouraged to keep an eye on updates from the shop directly.
It's the kind of story that sounds almost like a punchline, a car crashing into a lawnmower shop, only for lawnmowers to go missing, but for the people running the business, it meant a genuinely disruptive day. Here's hoping the hole in the wall, and the missing mowers, get sorted out soon.
Source: CBC Ottawa
