About a year ago, Pavel and Victoria Petrenko opened a new mechanics shop in Niverville called Check Engine. Amidst cultural adjustments and the economic struggle of COVID-19, the new Russian immigrants say that life has been challenging for them—but they’re happy to call Canada home.
The Petrenkos moved with their two children from Surgut, Siberia to Winnipeg in 2014. In 2016, the family moved to Niverville and Pavel worked as an auto technician at a local shop until they were able to open their own business. The couple officially signed the lease of Check Engine and registered their business in late 2019.
They opened their doors and COVID-19 threatened to immediately shut them down.
“It was a difficult time, but we made it through. We are alive,” Victoria says with a laugh. “When COVID started, things really slowed down. But we are here. We could be busier, so we are trying to get the word out.”
But the entrepreneurial drive is strong with Victoria and Pavel, who ran the same type of operation back in Russia. Pavel is a licensed Red Seal auto service technician with more than 20 years of technical expertise and automotive experience with European, import, and domestic cars. Victoria has an education in business accounting, and although numeracy is a highly transferrable skill, she also took a few courses at Red River College upon their arrival in Manitoba to familiarize herself with Canadian technology and accounting software.
“Some things can be different in Canada,” says Victoria. “Not necessarily with how things are done, but with software and some terminology. So it’s good to receive retraining.”
Their two boys are also highly driven to follow in their father’s footsteps. Dmitry, 15, has just begun the automotive technology at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School and Evgeny, 18, is in his first year of Engineering at the University of Manitoba.
Pavel also has the highest level of Engineering training possible in Russia, which Victoria says would be the equivalent of a master’s level education in Engineering in Canada. He has always had a passion for cars and has been fixing them since he was a teenager.
“In Russia, we had a similar business from 1998 and on, about 15 years before we moved here,” Victoria adds. “It didn’t take long before we decided we like this town and wanted to settle here. We decided to try to find a building space, and last year we signed our lease. The first few years, Pavel spent some time to receive all his necessary papers to operate as a mechanic in Canada. We are fully equipped to provide all kinds of cars with all kinds of services and Manitoba safety inspections.”
The Petrenkos welcome all makes and models of vehicles, but their focus is on European and Asian cars. Pavel’s specialty is working on European cars and imports that in many cases require special diagnostic equipment.
“Well, almost everyone does domestics, but to find a shop that works on European cars is harder,” Victoria admits. “Pavel has more than 20 years experience working on Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, and he has all the equipment and diagnostic scanners, the same as a dealership has, for these cars. And luxury cars as well, like Porsche and Bentley. So maybe this is our feature, that we can provide services that set us apart as different from others.”
They employ one other full-time mechanic and the two boys help out around the shop. As parents, Pavel and Victoria would be pleased if the boys followed them into the family business and, while they don’t try to push them, Pavel tries to show and teach them about the businesses when he has time.
Cultural Differences
No one in the family spoke English before coming to Canada, but all of them can now speak it. The boys picked it up quite easily from being in school and Victoria and Pavel both welcome opportunities to speak more English with customers through the business.
They say the culture here is very welcoming, but sometimes even if you can speak and understand English, the humour is hard to understand.
“I’m not sure if you can understand me,” Victoria laughs, “but I can understand you quite well.”
Pavel agrees. “The humour is the difficult part. Humour is very cultural… Sometimes I will not get the joke, but I will laugh anyway. And I will learn.”
The family has adjusted to life in Canada well, especially the weather. Considering their hometown of Surgut is north of the 60th parallel, they are quite familiar with the reality of long cold winters, so the climate here hasn’t given them any problems.
On the contrary! They are really enjoying it here, because it is warmer.
“We’re from Siberia,” says Victoria. “It would be more comparable to the Northwest Territories there. Our city was so gorgeous, but we’re good with cold.”
“It’s a great summer here,” adds Pavel.
Having just come through one of our great summers helps, weather-wise, but the couple agrees that their family feels completely settled.
“This is our home,” Victoria says with conviction. “We’re not moving back to Winnipeg. We’re here to help customers. Our children are here and we’re building the business here.”
Differences in Diagnostic Services
The two spoke about another cultural difference from Russia to Canada, which shows itself in the expectations customers have when they approach a mechanics shop to perform a job.
“In the European style, if a customer has a problem, he’ll bring us the car and say, ‘You just need to find it and fix the problem,’” says Pavel. “That’s normal in Germany, in Russia, just for any European countries. A customer will pay for a result. We will find it and fix it.”
He says the business is different in Canada. Here, a shop will look at a car, try different things, until they find a solution.
“A lot of times, we see, customers came to us and say they have already been to one place and a second place and third place,” Victoria says. “We are usually number two, three, four. If they need us to diagnose the car, we can find what is actually going wrong. But if a customer comes and says, ‘I know what the problem is,’ or ‘I googled and found you, now I need to replace this part,’ well… sometimes they’ve already ordered it on Amazon or eBay. We respect our customer and the customer is always right, and we can offer advice. If they again have the same problem, though, we can say, ‘Okay, let us do the diagnostic.”
Diagnostic services are very important to the staff at Check Engine. They see the potential to save customers money when problems are diagnosed and fixed accurately.
“We live in a small town and everybody talks,” says Victoria. “Obviously, if you do a bad job, nobody will come a second time. Price is very important. We try to do a high-quality repair job, with minimal price.”
This is a challenge that Pavel finds enjoyable. When they say customers often come to them after already being to several other mechanics shops, it’s not intended as an insult. Instead it highlights Pavel’s ability to find the root problem when a vehicle’s issue is very difficult to diagnose.
“It’s his favourite job. He always will take a challenge if other people cannot,” says Victoria. “Sometimes people will bring something in and say it is one thing, and after diagnostics we see it is not what was at surface level.”
“I like a smart job. I enjoy a mystery,” says Pavel. “Some problems present with the same symptoms, but are much different problems.”
Car Care Tip
Since a diagnostic mystery is considered a joy at Check Engine, not a threat, Pavel and Victoria’s top tip for vehicle owners is no surprise: have your car’s problem diagnosed correctly. And don’t wait to bring it in when you feel something is going wrong.
“It’s much cheaper to fix it when the problem starts,” Pavel says. “If you wait, it will be more expensive. A problem can grow from a small one to a big one, with a much different price tag.”
The two also want to get the word out that, with some types of vehicles nowadays, it often seems like there’s no alternative but to go back to the dealer, which can get expensive.
“We are here,” says Pavel. “If we say specialty, people think we can only fix performance cars or Germany cars. But no, we can and want to work on all models. But we also do have a specialization. We can fix your luxury car models cheaper than a dealer.”
