From her office window at King’s Garage on County Road 174 in L’Orignal, Aline Kingsbury has seen a lot of changes over the past five-plus decades.

Kingsbury and her husband Achille opened King’s Garage in 1965, in a small shop behind the couple’s home on Longueuil Street in the village. In 1972, they purchased a lot on then-Highway 17 and constructed the building where King’s Garage is located to this day. The move to the larger building was made because the thriving business had grown far too large for a backyard garage.

“We were very busy when we opened, because we were well-known,” recalls 88-year-old Aline Kingsbury, whose husband had been a mechanic for 15 years at the Laniel General Motors dealership in Hawkesbury. “I had been working at the Bertrand general store in L’Orignal and I knew lots of people from Lefaivre, Alfred, Vankleek Hill – and my husband was a very good mechanic.”

When they moved to the new building in 1972, County Road 174 was still known as Highway 17 and King’s gasoline sales thrived from the amount of cars which traveled what was then part of the Trans-Canada Highway. Although sales dropped after construction of Highway 417, King’s continued to sell gasoline until around the time of her husband Achille’s passing in 2015.

In her many years behind the counter, Mrs. Kingsbury has seen a lot of changes in the car repair business. When the garage moved to its current location, cars were still basically four wheels, an engine and a steering wheel – on which most maintenance and repair jobs could be done with simple tools. There were no fuel injection systems, no pollution control devices, and no computer modules to reprogram. As a result, King’s Garage is busier than ever.

“Ah Mon Dieu,” laughs Mrs. Kingsbury in her native French language, when asked about the changes she has seen in the past 56 years. “Now we work on big trucks, we do annual inspections on both cars and trucks, we specialize in tires – we do a lot of things here on the 17.”

King’s Garage is now run by Jean Kingsbury, the youngest offspring of Achille and Aline. The couple’s two daughters also continue to live in the area.

Mrs. Kingsbury can be found each morning in the same spot at King’s Garage that she has occupied for the past five decades. She loves her customers and looks forward to heading into work every single day.

“As long as I have my health it’s better to keep working, because I could not just stay at home – I’m too used to working and seeing people,” says Mrs. Kingsbury, who greatly appreciates the support of the community over the past 56 years and describes customers as part of the family.

“We do business as a family. We talk to everybody and everyone knows me as ‘Madame King’.”

A tribute to Achille Kingsbury hangs on the wall of King’s Garage, which was founded by Achille and Aline Kingsbury in 1965.