{"id":1012,"date":"2013-03-26T12:09:50","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T16:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2013-04-02T13:40:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T17:40:28","slug":"bill-rickard-strikes-the-right-chord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/bill-rickard-strikes-the-right-chord\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Rickard strikes the right chord"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/p>\n

Aurora\u2019s Bill Rickard is someone who has repeatedly defied the odds.<\/p>\n

It was little over 10 years ago that the owner of General Conveyors was on a European trip combining business with pleasure when in Italy on a motorcycle excursion he was hit head-on by an oncoming truck. It sheared his left arm clear off and later necessitated the amputation of his right leg.<\/p>\n

He maintained consciousness almost through the whole process, so the memories of the accident are vivid, but after eventually blacking out when the ambulance arrived, he was taken to a small country hospital before being airlifted out to a larger facility and eventually back to Canada. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe first surgeon who saw me worked like hell to keep me alive and I found out that the surgeon later went home and found out his 20 year old son had been in an accident and hit a man on a motorcycle,\u201d recalls Mr. Rickard. \u201cHe didn\u2019t know that at the time. The accident cracked my chest to my heart, ripped all the arteries, cut all the arteries in my legs, so I was bleeding to death. They said my jacket basically held me together and they had never had anyone live with so much blood loss and come out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From that point on in his recovery, he continued to defy all expectations.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rickard took over General Conveyors, the Aurora-based manufacturing company now located on Engelhard Drive, as a family business following the death of a relative, but however successful that venture was, his original passion had been music. As the business flourished, however, this passion eventually subsided in favour of the factory, but never actually faded away.<\/p>\n

It started when 66-year-old Mr. Rickard was a teen. He wanted to play the guitar but couldn\u2019t afford one, so his carpenter father suggested he build one; advice he followed. From there, he started building electric guitars with solid bodies, then acoustic guitars, a mandolin or two, and then he started playing the banjo. He needed something to play, so he put his creativity to the test to build and string one from scratch, and it was love at first strum.<\/p>\n

After joining the family business in his 30s, he no longer really had time to pursue his hobby, but by his late 40s, the interest started to creep back, taking lessons from famed Aurora-based banjo player Arnie Naiman. From there, he practiced two hours a day straight through until his accident at 57.<\/p>\n

\u201cSunnybrook said I would never walk again,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a prosthetic leg, so I can get around but it becomes a bit of a hassle. They said, \u2018by the way, you\u2019re not going back to work,\u2019 but within a year I was back at my business [but in hospital] I was drugged up, disoriented, thinking this only happens to other people in your life but never to you, but unfortunately it does.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere, I would wake up and somebody would be playing the banjo or would be playing the guitar for me and word got out in the community that I had this terrible accident and I was getting cards from people I didn\u2019t even know. Instead of flowers, I got a bouquet with harmonicas because you only need one arm to play the harmonica!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bill<\/a>

Bill Rickard with some members of his team, including Sean Sewell, Melissa Archer, and Al Box.<\/p><\/div>\n

But when he did eventually get back into his business, that same passion just wasn\u2019t there. Eventually he decided to turn what was then just a small part of his factory from its previous purpose to making all the parts necessary for banjos. Since then, he \u2013 and eventually his small army of equally passionate people \u2013 have turned the humble hobby into an international business leader in banjo construction, pioneering new techniques and styles of instruments, but also maintaining some of the more traditional makes, models, and materials. <\/p>\n

It has steadily grown and Mr. Rickard predicts that with the next year or two much of their operations will be devoted solely to making the parts that make the banjo an instrument continuing to grow in popularity.<\/p>\n

With his existing team, Mr. Rickard builds about 200 banjos a year. He concedes, of course, that trying to re-learn to build the instrument he loved with just one arm was a steep learning curve, but necessity is the mother of invention and he has figured out new techniques that in some cases have streamlined a few things here and there. With the renewed and growing popularity of the instrument, however, there is nowhere to go but up, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. has had a huge resurgence,\u201d he says, citing bands like Mumford and Sons who have made banjos part of their regular repertoire. \u201cYou can go through Flatt and Scruggs and bluegrass, and now old time music has come on, but young people have really gotten into it.\u201d
\nSince his accident, however, banjo making has gone far beyond a simple hobby or a new business interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of all the business people I knew, maybe only a handful of people came to see me in the hospital,\u201d says Mr. RIckard. \u201cThat affects you mentally. I think people in the arts and music are probably more compassionate and it is just something about your makeup. Maybe some people in business didn\u2019t know how to react. I tried this, didn\u2019t think I would be able to do it, but it worked. If it hadn\u2019t, I probably wouldn\u2019t be sitting here right now. I wouldn\u2019t be alive. I was in bad mental shape and now I wake up every morning and get annoyed because I have paperwork to do, but I would rather be back here building banjos!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Aurora\u2019s Bill Rickard is someone who has repeatedly defied the odds. It was little over 10 years ago that the owner of General Conveyors was on a European trip combining business with pleasure when in Italy on a motorcycle excursion he was hit head-on by an oncoming truck. It sheared his left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/web2013-03-26-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-gk","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 15:32:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}