Yvonne Lewis Langlois
“It was time,” states Hans Odermatt. After 22 years as Mr. O, he has decided to close his store. Located on Chateauguay St. in Huntingdon, Mr. O’s Computer Store has been the go-to place for the computer needs of so many in the Valley. It offered new and used computers, computer repairs and an internet café. But on October 1, Odermatt will officially retire. His wife Wendy retired last year and when he turned 65 in April he made up his mind to join her.
Odermatt chose another career path in his early years, working for decades as a paramedic. After studies in that field in his native Switzerland, he emigrated in 1979, completed paramedic courses in Montreal and the United States, and then began working in Huntingdon and Montreal. However, eventually an accident at work while lifting a patient changed all that. His injury required several back surgeries and put an end to his paramedic career. Treatment and recovery took about three years, and during that time he started to take computer tech courses, further exploring an interest he had already developed before the accident. “It was something that got me out in the morning and got me going … I needed something else to do. I just couldn’t just lie on my back,” he says. At the end of the surgeries he was able to take the exams for computer repair and sales. “Then I started my little shop with one little desk and chair and I built it up to what it is today,” Odermatt says with some pride.
At first the store was in his home; then he moved it to the building across from the pharmacy in Huntingdon, and in 2004 he bought the stone building where his store is located today. “It’s a great location for a business, as it is in the centre of town,” he says.
Twenty-two years means a lot of changes in technology, and Mr. O has seen them all. He was repairing computers even before Windows XP (released in 2001). “You grow into the computer business,” he says. In the early days of his store he opened an on-site internet café offering customers access to the World Wide Web back when almost no one could go online at home. Originally he had six chairs, but slowly went down to two stations as people bought their own computers.
COVID-19 has now closed down the café side completely. Besides the fax machine that sends 10 to 15 faxes every day and the customers who come to make copies or buy supplies, the store is relatively quiet.
Odermatt hopes to sell his building, which has the store on the ground floor and a residence above, to some up-and-coming entrepreneur. “I was hoping to spark somebody’s interest in the business. I will give them everything I have, every tool I have,” he laughs. He is actively looking for a place to retire to. He has been checking out places from Franklin to Nova Scotia. “I just want to have a little place that’s quiet,” he says. He would also like to travel when the pandemic is over, as he has many friends and family in Europe. He also looks forward to staying busy pursuing his hobbies of drone flying and building wooden models from Ukraine.
Mr. O is proud to say that over the years he has built 503 computers from scratch and none has ever come back with problems. He wants to thank the community for all its support during the span of his store, adding, “I think that I will miss the people more than the business itself.”