Our Schitt’s Creek pilgrimage (part 2)
Bob’s Garage
From the Town Hall, we headed back to the intersection and stopped to have a look at the distinctive blue building used in the series as Bob’s Garage, instantly recognisable even without all the signage, petrol pumps and other set dressing.
(An interesting aside: if you look beyond the garage in the photo, you’ll see a pitched roof belonging to what you might assume is an ordinary house. In fact, until around ten years ago this was the Goodwood Gospel Hall before being redeveloped as a more general-purpose community space; the original cream-painted structure can occasionally be glimpsed in shots of the intersection in Schitt’s Creek. Since being sold in 2024, however, the building has had a remarkable makeover and, from the highway, now resembles a Chinese restaurant more than a house. It’s actually a Buddhist practice and retreat; if you look on the right of the photo you can just see a couple of statues flanking a set of steps under a red and gold pagoda-style roof, which gives a hint of what the rest of it looks like.)
Originally built in 1937 as a warehouse, the building known as Bob’s Garage has been owned for nearly 40 years by local craftsman Joe Toby, who uses it as a workshop where he makes special furniture and equipment for use by disabled children. The faded baby-blue paint job is real, and is the colour Joe painted it in 1989. A couple of framed signs alluding to the workshop’s TV fame hang outside.
The mayor’s house and beyond
Crossing back over the intersection, we continued along Front Street heading south. Many of the houses on the west side of this residential street are familiar from Schitt’s Creek, most notably the pretty blue and white cottage that was home to mayor Roland Schitt and his wife Jocelyn.
The house looks much the same as it did on screen, apart from the porch sign and the French window in the front wall, which in the show was augmented with a little curved Juliet balcony.
There’s an interesting contrast between the houses on either side of this section of Front Street. Those on the west are smaller, mainly Victorian properties with little or no land at the front; the eastern side has larger, more modern houses that are set back from the road. These were deliberately not shown in Schitt’s Creek, partly because the more contemporary look wasn’t right for the fictional backwater, but also because, as the show’s location manager put it, ‘Smaller is funnier’.
Ray’s home/office is another recognisable building on the same section of Front Street. There’s an open space between this house and the one next to it, and this is where the crew would erect the motel sign when filming in Goodwood so that, in shots looking along the street, the motel would appear to be within the town whereas in reality it’s around 50 miles away!
One building that you might not recognise is Ivan’s bakehouse. This
was seen only in one episode and is where
Johnny visited Ivan to discuss the possibility of him baking
cinnamon buns for the motel reception. In the episode, the two meet
in Café Tropical and Ivan suggests that Johnny ‘call by my place’;
we next see Johnny’s car parked outside the bakehouse – which
is bizarre when you realise that it’s actually directly across the
street from the café, immediately behind the general store!
Speaking of which...
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