On an average Tuesday or Thursday evening, after the majority of Algonquin’s students have finished their classes for the day and are headed home, 73-year-old Harvey Percival is arriving for class.
The retired accountant is part of an often overlooked portion of the college’s student population – senior citizens. Also often overlooked is the centre for continuing education, in which he’s enrolled.
As a registered student in the automotive body and engine restoration courses, Percival has taken up the task of restoring his ’64 1/2 Mustang, a project he plans to put into action with his son this coming summer.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the legendary American muscle car. Percival intends to use his new-found knowledge to do the work on his rare vintage car himself.
“I’m certainly not expert enough to fix it up, myself,” said Percival. “These guys, if they recognize that I have no knowledge at all of this, they’ll just plunder me.”
Algonquin’s course offerings came across his radar and he decided to take advantage. While he’s definitely the oldest in the class, Percival fits right in.
“When he comes to talk to me,” Percival said of instructor Frank Leclair, “it’s sort of like being in a time warp, because I’m talking about engines as they were back in the ‘60s.”
If he weren’t doing the Mustang restoration himself, Percival jokingly speculated that he would likely have to find a mechanic as old as he is. Over the course of the 12-week program, he and his classmates have the entire automotive department to themselves on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
He’s in class with people of various ages, all of whom are working toward different goals with their time in the college’s night course.
“I find that the younger generation taking these programs often do so to get a feeling for that type of work; it gives them a sampler or a teaser of what would be involved in that specific trade maybe allowing them to decide if that would be a good career choice for them,” said Leclair. “Now with the more middle age students I tend to find them just wanting to further their education on a hobbyist level. Most of them have project cars sitting in their garage.”
That said, the varied ages mix quite well.
On Thursday, Feb. 19 – over reading week – while most full-time students are nowhere near the Woodroffe campus, Percival and his classmates, including Youri Querry, who is on the same team dismantling the engines, had successfully removed the third and last engine from the three cars they had been working on.
“That’s a nice engine,” said one of the younger students, mischievously, as he gestured to the hanging guts of an old beater. “It would be a shame if somebody were to kick it over.”
The dozen-or-so men all laughed and promptly got back to work.