They Left Their Dead Machines at Her Gate for 18 Years — Then the Parts Catalogue Disappeared

They Left Their Dead Machines at Her Gate for 18 Years — Then the Parts Catalogue Disappeared What do you do when the only supplier who carries your parts closes the catalogue — and you still have customers depending on you? In 2004, a farmer in Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec received a letter telling her that 79 of the parts she depended on were being permanently discontinued. Most people would have started calling customers to apologize. Lucette Thibodeau drove to Rouyn-Noranda. This is the story of what she did next — and what eighteen years of quiet, precise work built in a shed in northern Quebec. How one letter from a regional supplier set off a decision that would define the next two decades of a farm operation What it actually takes to manufacture obsolete agricultural parts from raw stock — and how a woman with a South Bend lathe and a borrowed afternoon with a machinist in Chicoutimi figured it out How a secondhand parts inventory became a two-province supply network that no distributor catalogue could replace