This story by Cassandra Hemenway was first published in The Bridge on Nov. 18, 2025.
Things have been busy at Boisvert’s Shoe Repair in Barre over the last few weeks while the family has been selling inventory and auctioning off equipment. The 75-year-old anchor business on Main Street in downtown Barre is closing Nov. 24, ending a five-generation legacy that started in Quebec, moved to Northfield, and finally settled in Barre when Ernie Boisvert moved the shop there in 1950.
The community isn’t just losing a longtime family business; it’s losing a service that is increasingly hard to find. The closest shoe repair service to Barre is Balance Works, 66 miles away in Rutland.
Megan Boisvert, 34, the fifth generation to run the shop, said the closing is critical for her family, allowing her father, Karl, 70, to retire. She cited dwindling retail sales; two major floods, in 2023 and 2024; and COVID among the reasons for shuttering the business.
None of the Boisverts (and one volunteer) could talk for long about the move without tearing up. On a busy Thursday last week, customers came and went, picking up their shoe repairs for the last time, and buying discounted polish, shoes, laces, boots, and other leather goods before the option no longer exists. One customer even bought the store clock.
Loreen Abraham, of Barre, said she’s been a Boisvert’s customer since 1993. The former owner of Bag Ladies Deli in Barre has had countless repairs done at the shop, gotten her shoes polished there regularly, and even had a knife sheath that belonged to her father repaired about a month ago.
But mostly, Abraham said, “I always come in for a polish.”
As Abraham spoke, a shop volunteer, Marcy, explained the store’s three-step polishing process to another customer, surgeon Dick Butsch. “We do the pigment, dense cream, so then you put it on with a soft cloth, small circles, let it set for a few minutes, buff it off with a brush. Or you can buff it off with another clean cloth,” she told him, “Then you use a brush and put wax on, and then you buff after that, and then you snow proof.”
In response to his confused look, she said he can call her if he forgets any of the steps. Butsch said he has been a Boisvert customer since the 1970s. “I’ve had everything repaired here except my car,” he said. Boisvert’s closing, he added, is “the worst thing in the last 30 years. There’s no other one like it in the state.”
Over the years, Butsch said he’s bought new shoes at Boisvert’s, along with winter socks and winter gloves. But, “one of their problems is, everything they sell lasts.”
And there’s the rub. Megan Boisvert noted that the store’s business used to be 70% retail and 30% repairs. As customers increasingly started shopping online, that flipped, and now the store revenue comes mostly from repairs.
Because of that, she said, “I just felt like the business wasn’t strong enough for me to take over. And, unfortunately, with retail being down, I’d be here all the time doing repairs.”
Megan Boisvert repeatedly urged customers to shop locally if they want to keep local businesses open. Another factor, she said, is that without a staff, she has to close the shop at 4 p.m. most days so she can go to her two other jobs, as a bartender and server at local restaurants.
Mary Ellen Boisvert, wife of fourth generation shop owner Karl, said the shoe repair has been a major feature of the shop, but they have also ended up fixing tents, zippers, jackets and more. Megan Boisvert recalled the time her father and one of their stitchers made a leather bra for a cow whose udder was dragging on the ground. They also once made a harness for an iguana, she said, and fixed a leather sex toy for a local couple.
But the heart of the business has always been shoe repair, what Megan calls “the basics”: heels, half soles, rips, elastic, shines, stretching (“lots of stretching”), replacing rivets and hooks, and, often, a polish-while-you-wait.
When her grandfather opened the shop, Megan said, he was given the space rent-free for two weeks, which was exactly how long he had to make a go of it in order to start paying rent. So he lined up chairs and polished shoes while customers waited. There were six other shoe repair shops in town at the time, but his approach beat them out.
“He had no choice,” his granddaughter said. “He just worked and did what he knew.” Ernie Boisvert had learned shoe repair from his father, Adelard, who had the shop in Northfield, and Adelard learned it from his father, Joseph, who ran a shop in Quebec.
Megan will miss the customers. Some have been coming to the shop since before Megan was born, and they’ve known her all her life. She runs into them everywhere.
In a Facebook post, Megan closed with a message to the shop’s many customers: “To our loyal customers and neighbors: thank you for your trust, your support, and your friendship through the years. It’s been an honor to keep your shoes — and this community — walking strong.”
Cassandra Hemenway has been a customer of Boisvert’s off and on since 1994, over which time she has had countless pairs of shoes polished, stretched and repaired.
