This article is part of a seven-part series featuring NC alumni who are finalists for this year’s Ontario Premier’s Awards. Elizabeth Tait (Motive Power Technician, 2011) has been nominated in the Apprenticeship category.
Being a woman and single mom in the male-dominated auto mechanics sector, Elizabeth Tait — an alumna of Niagara College’s Motive Power Automotive program — is accustomed to proving herself.
Even as she graduated in 2011 the auto industry was changing before her eyes, hurtling into the era of cars and trucks being outfitted with increasingly complex on-board computer systems to make vehicles “smarter” and their occupants safer.
Today, Tait is a business-to-business (B2B) entrepreneur who gives independent auto repair shops the support they need to service all of that technology.
A key factor in her journey was COVID-19. In 2020, as the pandemic shuttered businesses across the country, Tait was laid off from the auto repair facility where she worked. During the lockdown, when not tending to her kids, she made time each day for her laptop, finding and absorbing resources to keep growing her automotive knowledge.
Social distancing resulted in a large number of advanced training programs being made available online, including the emerging field of Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS) — the array of radars, sensors, cameras and navigational aids that have become standard equipment on vehicles over the past decade or more.
While ADAS revolutionized the driving experience, it also introduced the need for an entire new realm of automotive maintenance. After collision repairs, windshield replacements, or changes to the steering/suspension systems (including routine alignments) and more, their technology systems need recalibrating, sometimes diagnosing, and restoring.
ADAS calibration training, common at major big-brand dealerships, was trickling down much more slowly to local repair facilities that had no head office to provide tech support. Neighbourhood garages needed a resource to get them into the ADAS game.
“Independent techs who aren’t working for Honda or Ford don’t get built-in training upgrades,” Tait said.
“Plus, a lot of mechanics are just a few years from retirement, at an age where they don’t want to deal with the complex electrical circuitry. For them it’s easier to do a brake job than to learn Ohm’s Law, or how computers communicate over networked high-speed data lines.”
Hearing opportunity knock, Tait studied online learning more about the complex systems and the very specific conditions manufacturers have laid out under which the vehicle must be calibrated in. Already fluent in mechanical diagnostics thanks to her NC program and work experience, she now zeroed in to understand the technology behind the ADAS systems more.
In 2021, Tait became owner/operator of a Level5Drive franchise in St. Catharines, a company that provides ADAS calibration service to collision shops, auto glass and mechanical repair facilities. Tait also provides technical and diagnostic backup for her fellow Level5Drive franchises in places like Burlington, Ancaster, Cambridge, Guelph and Windsor. And she’s developing in-house training courses for company employees.
When the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) released their Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Specialist Certification in 2022, she was one of the first in Canada to pass testing and obtain certification.
“You have to demonstrate the importance of doing ongoing training in your field, staying on top, especially now there’s so much evolution and advancement coming in auto tech every year,” she said.
To mentor and inspire more skilled people like herself, Tait has returned to Niagara — but this time as a part-time instructor who teaches Motive Power courses. These have included post-secondary, pre-apprenticeship and high-school partnership programs.
Tait remembers her own situation years ago when she first enrolled at NC. Unlike most of her male classmates, she had never studied mechanics in high school. She also had a young daughter and was surviving with the help of OSAP.
The college’s Automotive Program director saw her challenges, saw her determination, and stepped up to help, condensing her studies and fast-tracking her apprenticeship.
“The teachers were phenomenal, very supportive of me, not only during college but after graduation,” she said. “Most of them were actually also still working in the industry, while also teaching.
“That was a huge confidence booster, being supported by these people who had worked in the industry for 25 years. They saw something in me that said, ‘I can do this.’
“I’ve never forgotten that.”
