KNUTSFORD, P.E.I. — Except for a few camper trailers, the Greenspot Auto Sales lot that once displayed 80 to 90 new and used vehicles, is empty and quiet.
The company’s remaining used cars are all displayed in the showroom.
With no more inventory arriving, traffic through the Knutsford sales lot has slowed in recent weeks and soon it will be no more.
Citing health reasons, the company announced a closing out sale in September. Greenspot founder, Norman MacDougall later died on Oct. 8.
Like the remaining cars and campers, the lot and building are now up for sale. Dec. 19 has been set as the final day of operation for the business and prices have been further reduced.
“It’s been a painful process, really,” Joyce MacDougall said of the decision to close a business her late husband started 47 years ago.
“We knew it was coming but, it’s been our life, right?”
Greenspot Auto Sales was founded on Nov. 1, 1972, the business name chosen because of the small green sales booth on the lot.
The business expanded to the current lot and building nine years later. The service bays were added in 1982.
But Norman's career as a car salesman started long before he opened a sales lot.
“He’d buy a car and fix it up and sell it while he was going to university,” MacDougall said.
He taught for a while at O’Leary High School and then taught adult upgrading, all the while selling cars on the side, she added.
It came naturally to him as his father, Vaughn, had previously sold cars for D. Alex MacDonald Ltd.
Norman sold new cars as a sub-dealer for D. Alex MacDonald's until 2004.
He expanded into the housing and apartment business in 1985, eventually having 32 apartment units and four rental houses. The last of those units are now in the process of being sold.
MacDougall, who was long-involved with the company as a “go-for”, has been staffing the Greenspot office since 2008.
For her brother, Allan Gorrill, Greenspot Auto Sales has been the only job he has ever known.
He worked for Norman on the car lot since high school. He said vehicle sales tapered off as the apartment business grew.
Gorrill agreed it is time to close up shop.
“I’m getting older. It’s time for somebody younger, newer ideas.”
He said he’d love to see the sales lot continue.
“It would be nice if somebody came in and did what we do, with cars and trailers.”
Camper trailer sales started pretty well by chance about 10 years ago. Norman had bought a trailer for his family’s use, but before he got to try it out, someone offered to buy it. The same thing happened with the next one.
“Norm always said, ‘Everything but the wife and kids’,” MacDougall said of her late husband’s passion for sales.
“Next thing he decided he might as well have a bunch of (campers) around,” Gorrill recalls. Eventually, he had up to 25.
MacDougall said wanting to make life better for their sons is why her husband worked so hard throughout his career.
O’Leary resident Nancy MacMillan is sad to see the business close.
Norman had delivered her first car to her when she finished university nearly 40 years ago.
It was a standard and he took the time to teach her how to drive it.
All but one of the cars she’s owned since then came off the Greenspot lot, the most recent one Norman having found for her in Ontario.
“They’ve been good to my whole family,” she said.
MacDougall and Gorrill tell of having many loyal customers, some having bought 15 or more cars from Greenspot, but MacMillan praises the Greenspot staff for loyalty to their customers.
“They were awesome to deal with,” she said, adding she's also rented from Norman and Joyce and bought her first home from them.
She marvelled at how the couple always remembered all of their tenants with special Christmas gifts.
“They have me spoiled,” said MacDougall.
“I think [Norm] was pretty fair to deal with,” MacDougall said of her husband’s business dealings, noting he’d call his customers a month or two after a sale to see how they were getting along.
“He’d always say, ‘If anything goes wrong, don’t tell your neighbours, tell us.’”
Norman MacDougall went the extra mile for early learning centre
Joyce MacDougall points to a property at 22 Beechwood Ave. in O’Leary as a source of immense pride for her late husband.
Currently housing West Prince Veterinary Services and a CHANCES Early Learning Centre, the property will be the one piece of real estate remaining once the Greenspot Auto Sales lot and the apartments founded by Norman MacDougall have been sold.
She describes how her husband went the extra mile to make space functional as an early learning centre and she suggests he took it on as a legacy project.
“That was his – I think it was because the community was so good to us when the kids were starting school,” she said.
“At that time, it wasn’t where totally blind kids went.”
The MacDougall’s adult sons, Darren and Darcy, have been blind since birth.
She said everything just seemed to fall into place when the boys reached school age for them to be able to obtain their education locally.
“Being a small community, they gave us the opportunity,” she said.
And so, it was why Norman pulled out all the stops to make an early learning centre in O’Leary a possibility.
“It didn’t matter what they asked for, Norm gave,” she said proudly.
Walls were torn out; others were put up. He even had miniature functional toilets installed.
She said he took particular pride in building a playground for the children.
“He nearly drove me crazy with the playground,” she laughs.
“I said, ‘Norm, you might as well do it and it’s done," she said.
“It was, I guess, a legacy Norm wanted to leave.”
This year CHANCES applied funds they received from a grant to add a boat-type play structure to the playground. On the bow is the boat’s name, "Norman’s Pride".
