‘Time machine of creativity’: Even in digital age, demand for typewriters fuels N.S. business
CBC
In a house beside the ocean in Queens County, Rachel Spence takes a disassembled typewriter out of a bin and begins carefully cleaning off the grime.
“This one is in pretty good shape, actually,” she says. “So many problems are actually related to [dirt] because typewriters are covered in old oil, dirt, grime, nicotine — so much nicotine — and that becomes kind of a thing.”
Spence is cleaning and repairing the machine in preparation for sale — part of a business that arose out of a difficult experience early in the pandemic, when Spence lost her job and caught COVID-19 in quick succession.
Looking for a hobby in the wake of that disruption, Spence got into typewriters. Her business, Ocean View Typewriters, now sells machines to customers across the country.
“It definitely fills a niche for people,” she says. “It's that literal thing of your brain really just connecting to the words that you're actually putting on the page.”
Spence had never owned a typewriter before moving to Nova Scotia.
In 2020, she was working in publishing in Toronto when the pandemic hit. Spence was laid off and soon afterward caught COVID, which ended up turning into long COVID. That made it difficult for her to look at screens or work fixed hours.
“I had to really think about what I needed after that point.”
Seeking a calmer pace of life, Spence and her parents found a house for sale in Port Mouton, N.S., and bought it sight unseen.
They moved to Nova Scotia in 2021, when Spence, who has a long-standing love of words, began collecting typewriters.
“Of course when you get a typewriter that's been sitting in like a closet … it’s not working very well,” she says.
“I've always been very mechanically inclined, it’s like, ‘Let's find out how the heck to work on one of these and repair it.’”
For a time, Spence collected and repaired typewriters as a hobby.
“And once you start collecting, it can be hard to stop, especially with typewriters.”
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