To many people a gas station is just a gas station. As long as the price is comparable, one is pretty much as good as the next.
But to people living in a small rural town, the local gas station can be much more than that.
For starters, it might be the only gas station for miles around. And, just like the local bank, post office and corner store, it can become part of the community.
That’s how Erin Parks-Dier feels about her local MacEwen’s station in Finch, Ontario, about an hour south-east of Ottawa. “It's a country gas station. Everybody knows everybody. People come here in the morning to have coffee," she says.
Parks-Dier has started a petition to save the gas station, after MacEwen’s indicated its closing it down at the end of the month.
The petroleum company says the same passage of time that has made the gas station such a fixture in Finch has also made it a liability. It needs major upgrades to the pumps, holding tanks, the building and more. While business at the Finch gas bar has been steady over the years, it’s not enough to justify the expense involved. “It’s not a choice we’re taking lightly,” says the company’s President, Allan MacEwen. “We don’t like to do it but it’s more a case of having to do it for a variety of reasons.”
“It’d be really sad to see this go,” says Amanda Bilmer, who lives next door to the station and can vouch for how busy it is. She also says her parents made money off it when they ran it thirty years ago.
For some, it’s not just about where they buy their gas. It’s about the gradual erosion of services that seems to be happening in small towns everywhere. If this business closes, they fear which other service might follow. “They lost the Bank of Nova Scotia in Avonmore which is five minutes down the road,” says Andrew Dier. “There's no longer a fuel station there either. It closed."
In this case, it’s not a decision being made in some corporate board room in some distant city. MacEwen’s is a local company with its head office in Maxville, about 25 minutes down the road. Allan MacEwen says they are sensitive to that small town sentiment. That’s why he’s made the people of Finch an offer. “If somebody wants to buy it we'll give them a very good deal,” he says.
Barring that, the pumps in Finch could be dry by the end of the month, leaving motorists with no choice but to bypass the quaint little town and burn a little more gas buying gas somewhere else.
