Darryl Lane has been working in industrial trades as a refrigeration technician for 34 years.
The owner of Burgess Plumbing and Heating since 2022, he started working with the company in May of 2004.
“I worked as a service tech until 2013 when I purchased shares from one of the previous shareholders, Ed Kozuki,” he said.
As a youth growing up in Gambo, Nfld., he always had work and liked to have money in his pocket.
He tried various jobs such as working in a warehouse at a fish plant, on a farm planting and harvesting, and for his uncle who had an HVAC company in Newfoundland.
“He hired me on as a helper one summer and I really liked it, splitting up between working on the farm and with him.”
After high school graduation, he went to trades school and got his pre-app and refrigeration mechanic certification.
“I worked for a year for my uncle but it was seasonal.”
At the age of 20-years-old he decided to head to British Columbia.
“It was the early 90s and there weren’t many opportunities for young people unless you wanted to work seasonally. That was never my plan - I wanted full-time work.”
He chose the Lower Mainland because he had relatives living there who he could stay with while he searched for work.
A neighbour’s oldest son was living in Prince George working in refrigeration, and although Lane didn’t know him because there was an 18-year difference in age, the neighbour told Lane the company his son worked for was looking for someone.
“I landed here in B.C. on a Wednesday and Thursday I was working and have been full-time ever since.”
Frank Burgess started the company in 1953 and Lane said it is the oldest service company in Williams Lake. Kozuki said he went to work there in the 1960s and stayed 54 years, becoming the front man for the company and eventually president until he retired in 2016.
The business had a few different locations over the years, but originally Frank ran it out of his home with one vehicle for himself.
“He built it from there,” Lane said.
Since taking over, Lane has made a business model shift to light commercial and residential services for personal preference and a business preference.
“There are lots of houses in town, there are lots of businesses doing renovations or have nice new building so it’s a field I felt we could capitalize on.”
There are 28 employees at Burgess. Aside from refrigeration technicians looking after Walmart, Save-on-Foods, FreshCo, and corner stores, he said. There are also HVAC technicians who work with heat pumps commercially and residentially and plumbers who take care of plumbing needs.
“We don’t cover all aspects of plumbing. We don’t do drain cleaning anymore, we don’t do wells and we don’t do sewage or anything. Mainly it’s service, repair and renovations. We don’t have any electricians on staff either.”
Darryl’s wife is Karri Lane and they have two children - Amanda and Brendan, who is also a refrigeration technician working for Burgess. Lane has a 33-year-old daughter, Alyssa Gillingham, from a previous relationship, he said.
He enjoys playing hockey with a group of friends, loves to snowmobile in the winter, and golf and camp as often as he can in the summer.
“Williams Lake has a really bright future,” he said. “If you are an outdoor enthusiast the world’s your oyster here. You can bike, ski, snowmobile, fish, hike, whatever and it’s all within an hour or minutes sometimes.”
He said some of his employees go fishing in the summer before they come into work and they are always on time.
“For me that’s a huge thing to advertise to potential employees. We have a great family lifestyle here - the work life balance can be awesome. You’re home at a decent time, you’re not always spending hours in traffic.”
When he worked on the coast for eight months, he was staying in Abbotsford and if had to go into Vancouver for work he tried to be on the bridge before 6 a.m. and on the east side of the bridge prior to 2:30 p.m. for his return trip home.
Working an eight-hour day in Williams Lake is easier as well because within minutes he’s home, he said, adding he even goes home for lunch.
“Not too many people in big cities can say that.”
