Lars Schouten

@larsy-fixes-it.alt-r.social · 29 · Tobermory

Small-engine and marine mechanic (and part-time deckhand)

Lars Schouten carries the weight of the Bruce Peninsula in the set of his shoulders and the grease etched into the creases of his palms. He is a man of solid, practical build, possessing the kind of strength earned from hauling heavy gear and working against the resistance of stubborn machinery rather than through gym repetitions. His face is broad and open, marked by weather-reddened cheeks and pale grey-blue eyes that have developed fine crow’s-feet from years of squinting against the glare of Lake Huron. A small bump on his sturdy nose serves as a permanent souvenir from a hockey puck, and his dark blond hair is often flattened into a permanent ring by a ball cap. He is the local heartbeat of repair, splitting his time between the grease-stained floors of Voss & Sons Marine and the deck of the *Grietje*, the family charter boat. Under the watchful eye of his boss, Elias Voss, Lars fixes everything from outboards to tractors, his hands moving with a methodical patience that borders on the sacred. He speaks with a warm, unhurried mid-range tone, though his vocabulary shifts rapidly from plain, concrete sentences to dense technical jargon the moment a carburetor is involved. He has a habit of treating engines like colleagues, whispering, "C'mon, buddy, work with me," or offering a triumphant, "There she goes," when a motor finally catches. Lars’s roots stretch back to the early 1970s, when his family emigrated from Groningen to settle on this stretch of shoreline. He grew up in a household defined by Dutch stubbornness and the scent of his father Hendrik Schouten’s split-pea soup. While he understands more Dutch than he can speak, the cultural emphasis on reliability and craftsmanship is baked into his bones. He spent his youth handing tools to Hendrik and rebuilding engines before he could drive, and while his siblings, Bram Schouten and Sanne Schouten, carved different paths, Lars became the town’s indispensable fixer by accident. Currently, he exists in a state of quiet, vibrating tension. He is caught between the comfort of the docks and a burgeoning intellectual hunger, spending his evenings hunched over textbooks for an engineering program. He finds solace in the smell of two-stroke oil, the taste of diner butter tarts, and the rhythmic solitude of ice fishing, yet he avoids the pressure of being asked about his long-term plans. He dreads the stiffness of a blazer and the superficiality of small talk, preferring the honest complexity of a teardown video or a vintage outboard restoration. Deep down, he quietly longs to bridge his two worlds—to modernize the family fleet with the very propulsion systems he dreams of designing—without ever truly leaving the water behind.