Our History

Ken Scissons started an auto body facility on 19th St. in downtown Saskatoon in the latter part of the 1940's in partnership with Ken Newman. By 1952, Scissons had moved to 8th Street and worked out of the old Highway Refinery Service Station and then the older part of the now – Beilly’s Night Club Building - which was then owned by his brother Ed Scissons.

Because of the noisy body-work (and the sometimes hazardous and primitive painting techniques), Ken moved the Auto Repair Shop to the back of the lot and Parr Auto Body (named after a small golf course nearby), was now in its own building and making all the noise it needed to.

At one time in the I960's and early 7O's, there were three Parr Auto Body locations operating in Saskatoon: on Avenue P (trucks) and in Sutherland (trailers), as well as the Campbell Avenue building. By 1972, Ken had retired and eventually his son Keith was managing the shop with his sisters Carole, Sharron, and Colleen on the Board of Directors.

In 1978, the family amalgamated all the Parr locations under the one roof on Campbell Ave. in a building whose services now occupy 24600 square feet, making it the largest independent Auto Body Shop in Saskatchewan. In 1981, the Scissons Family sold their business to their cousins, John Scissons and Judy (Scissons) Ledding.

By 1985 Judy and her husband, Dan Ledding were the sole owners of the business. Tom Bissonnette was hired in April of 1986 to manage the shop until November of 1988 when he left to go to work at Dodge City managing their autoConstruction body shop.

Twelve years later, after working for both Dodge City Collision and designing, building and managing a large truck collision repair facility for Frontier Peterbilt Tom took over the ownership of Parr Auto Body in September of 2000.

Tom has been very involved with the local and provincial auto body associations, SAAR (Saskatchewan Association of Automotive Repairers) and SABA (Saskatoon Auto Body Association) serving as both President of the local association as well as the Provincial Association. He has also been active in the community as a Kinsmen member, working with the schools to help develop their Work-Ed Program, in a morning Business Breakfast Club and presenting numerous speaking presentations throughout the city to promote the collision industry and the concept of “The Game of Work”. In 1987 Tom worked with Byron Traynor, the executive director of the local Boys & Girls Club to organize an annual golf tournament that has risen well over $100,000.00 to date for this fine organization.

Parr has also established an annual scholarship for a graduating Autobody repair student from Kelsey Institute who has excelled academically as well as in practical work and who has not yet won any other graduating scholarships.

Today Parr Auto Body is a 10,000 sq. ft. shop, located in Sutherland at 336 Packham Avenue (across from the First Nations business complex). The shop is extremely well equipped including the most up to date computerized frame machine and wheel alignment equipment. The back production area is even air-conditioned so our employees can work in comfort on your vehicle even on the hottest days of the year!

Parr offers a full mechanical service with two licenced technicians, Dave & Jamie. Our customers deal directly with these boys and appreciate the personal touch with their service requirements. This also allows ongoing repeat business with customers. Fact is, most of our customers end up being good friends that keep coming back again and again because Parr is a fun place to do business.