By Gideon Scanlon
Toronto, Ontario — May 31, 2019– I’d intended to write this weeks column on the many collision repair facilities that were celebrating the Toronto Raptors efforts to dribble, dunk and alley-oop their way to the top of the National Basketball Association, but that doesn’t quite feel right. Canada’s collision community lost one of its own this week — CIIA founder John Norris.
While Collision Repair ran an obituary on Wednesday, I thought I would take the opportunity to thank John for his long service to the industry, and the sage counsel he offered to me personally. I didn’t know John well, we had spoken on a number of occasions, and he had taken quite a bit of time to help me come to grips with the ins-and-outs of collision repair during my early days covering the industry.
For those who didn’t get the chance to meet him, John was a big believer in the industry–and in fairness. In recent years, he made it his mission to ensure that the aftermarket’s right to repair vehicles were not impacted by efforts to lock out access vehicle service information. In fact, it seems fair to say he was that cause’s greatest champion.
On a personal level, I am particularly grateful for his gracious offer to review one of my earliest submissions to this magazine, which was on the number of new apprentices entering the industry. Quickly realizing that I had relied on a dubious source for my information, he emailed me before I submitted the inaccurate report. Rather than leaving it there, John followed-up with a list of far more reliable statistics, and a phone call to clarify the issue with the original report.
I wasn’t the only young person in the industry John was prepared to extend a helping hand to. He was similarly generous with his time with several of my current and former colleagues at Collision Repair and Bodyworx Professional, regularly providing many of them with feedback about our work. He was also an ardent defender of the collision industry’s apprentices. In fact, John was returning home from the Skills Canada National Competition in Halifax when he died.
