Auto Repair for Chisholm Township Drivers
AutoNorth Auto Repair is a licensed auto repair shop at 1520 Cholette St in North Bay, open Monday to Friday from 8:00am to 5:00pm, serving drivers across the Township of Chisholm in Nipissing District. Chisholm is unusual among its neighbours in that it has no village centre. Its communities, Alderdale, Booth's Landing, Chiswick, Fossmill, Grahamvale and Wasing, are small clusters of housing rather than service centres. A township of 1,312 people with no main street puts an enormous amount of weight on one vehicle, which is why a page written for Chisholm is really a page about dependability.
Last updated August 10, 2026
How Far Is AutoNorth From Chisholm?
Far enough that the honest answer is a route rather than a number. The Township of Chisholm covers 205.77 square kilometres and has no single village centre to measure from, so where the drive starts changes what the drive is. The route runs out of the township to the Highway 11 corridor at Callander or the Highway 94 corridor through East Ferris, both of which are in neighbouring municipalities, and then north into North Bay to 1520 Cholette St. The Get Directions button below measures it from wherever you actually are, which is more useful than any single figure a page like this could print.
- Callander and East Ferris sit off Chisholm's northwest corner, and Bonfield off its east. The northwest is the side most people leave from, because the roads that carry you toward North Bay pick up there. Which crossing makes sense depends entirely on where in the township the trip begins.
- There is no main street to aim for. The township's communities are Alderdale, Booth's Landing, Chiswick, Fossmill, Grahamvale and Wasing. The historical record describes them today as small clusters of housing rather than service centres, with Fossmill abandoned outright. A trip from one of them is not the same trip as from another, which is exactly why this page gives a route and lets Google do the arithmetic.
- 205.77 square kilometres, 1,312 people. The 2021 Census counted 1,312 residents in Chisholm, up from 1,291 in 2016, spread across more than two hundred square kilometres of township. Population that thin over ground that wide is the reason a working vehicle is not a convenience here. It is the infrastructure.
- The provincial highways belong to the neighbours. Highway 11 runs through Callander, and Highway 94 runs through East Ferris between Highway 654 near Callander and Highway 17 near Corbeil. Both are next-door routes rather than Chisholm roads, and the one you use is decided by which side of the township you live on.
- The township sits on a height of land. Chisholm straddles the divide between the Great Lakes watershed and the Ottawa River watershed. The Wasi River runs west from here toward Lake Nipissing while Depot Creek runs into Lake Nosbonsing. Water leaving Chisholm goes two different directions, and so, more or less, does everybody driving out of it.
- An Ontario shop is an Ontario shop. Chisholm is in Nipissing District, and where a vehicle is registered has no bearing on where it can be inspected or certified. A licensed inspection station in North Bay can certify a vehicle registered anywhere in the province.
AutoNorth Auto Repair. 1520 Cholette St, North Bay, Ontario P1A 0A9. Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm, closed weekends. Call (705) 472-6060 or text (705) 571-4391. Parking is on the gravel lot out front.
DirectionsDriving Directions From Chisholm to AutoNorth
AutoNorth Auto Repair is at 1520 Cholette St, North Bay, Ontario P1A 0A9. Tap the button and Google Maps opens the route from Chisholm on your phone, ready to navigate.
Parking is on the gravel lot out front. If the shop is closed when you arrive, the after-hours key drop is at the building and the work starts first thing in the morning.
Finding It at an Inspection vs Finding It on the Road
Same part, same eventual failure, two completely different days. The gap between those two columns is what a driver in a township without a commercial strip is really buying when a vehicle goes up on a hoist for a look rather than for a repair.
| Finding it at an inspection vs finding it on the road | Found at an inspection | Found on the road |
|---|---|---|
| When you find out | While the vehicle is already on the hoist, before the part has let go | At the moment it lets go, wherever that happens to be |
| What it costs | The part and the labour to fit it | The part, the labour, whatever the failure damaged on its way out, and getting the vehicle to a shop |
| Whether you choose the timing | You do. It goes in the calendar for a day that suits the household | You do not. The vehicle picks the day and the hour |
| What happens to the rest of your day | Planned around in advance, with the shuttle or the key drop covering the gap | Stops where you are stopped, and stays stopped until the vehicle moves |
| Who is available to help | A shop with your inspection report and your vehicle history already open | Whoever you can reach from where you are, on whatever notice they have |
| How the decision gets made | From photos and video of your own vehicle, on your phone, one line item at a time | Over the phone, under pressure, without seeing any of it |
Nothing in the left column is dramatic. That is the point of it. Wheel bearings, ball joints, brake lines, belts, boots, batteries and cooling systems almost all give notice before they quit, and an inspection is simply the appointment where somebody is looking for that notice instead of waiting to be told about it.
Seeing the Work Without Driving Back In
The digital inspection report is the part of this shop that matters most to somebody who lives a drive away from it. Photos and video of your own vehicle arrive by text and by email, grouped by priority, and every item is approved or declined from a phone or a computer. There is no second trip in to stand beside the hoist and be shown something.
- The report comes by both text and email. Not one or the other. Whichever one you actually check is the one that reaches you, which matters when a signal or a schedule is unreliable.
- Photos and video, of your vehicle. Not a diagram of a generic part and not a stock image. The worn component in the picture is the one currently bolted to your car, which is the difference between being informed and being told.
- Items come grouped by priority. What needs doing now, what should be watched, and what is fine are separated before the report ever reaches you, so a long list stops reading like a long bill.
- Approve or decline each line yourself. From wherever you are, without a phone call, without anybody standing over the decision. Declining an item is a normal outcome, not an argument.
- Two-way text messaging. The shop runs AutoLeap, so a question about a line item can be asked and answered by text rather than by playing telephone tag between a bay and a driveway.
- The after-hours key drop turns two drives into one. Leave the vehicle the night before and work starts first thing in the morning rather than whenever the trip in gets made.
- The customer shuttle includes rides home. Mention it when booking so it can be arranged in advance rather than sorted out on the day.
What Does a Service Visit From Chisholm Cost?
AutoNorth quotes the price before the work is done. An oil change is quoted before you book for gas and diesel, with a new filter, a 120-point visual inspection and a wash, and everything past that is quoted before the work is done rather than explained afterward.
- Oil changes are quoted before you book. That is gas and diesel, with a new filter, the 120-point visual inspection and a wash. Diesel and larger-capacity engines hold more oil, so call with the year, make and model and the number comes back before the trip in, not after it.
- The 120-point visual inspection comes with the oil change. It is not a separate line and it is not sold as an add-on. For a vehicle that spends its life covering distance, the routine service is also the regular appointment where somebody looks at the rest of it.
- Diagnosis is quoted before the vehicle comes in. You are told what it costs to find the fault. The repair is a separate number, quoted once there is something real to quote, and it is quoted to you rather than assumed.
- Third-party financing is available through AT Clarke Enterprises. A repair that has to happen does not always land in a month that can absorb it. Ask when booking and the options can be laid out before any work is authorised.
- Technicians are paid straight time, not flat rate. Nobody at this shop earns more by rushing a vehicle through or by finding extra work on it. Most of what people distrust about this trade traces back to a pay structure, and AutoNorth does not run that one.
- The answer is allowed to be no. A report that tells you a set of pads has another season in them is the same report that will tell you when they do not. That only means anything if both answers are genuinely available.
Call (705) 472-6060 or text (705) 571-4391 with what the vehicle is doing and what it is. The price conversation happens before the drive, which is the only order that makes sense when the drive is the expensive part.
What Is Actually at the Cholette St Shop
Numbers instead of adjectives. AutoNorth Auto Repair opened on Cholette St in September 2025, is rated 5.0 across 24 Google reviews, stocks 21 tire brands, racks close to 200 customer tire sets between seasons, and runs a 120-point visual inspection with every oil change.
- 21 tire brands stocked. Mounting, balancing, puncture repair and seasonal changeovers all happen in the same building, so a tire decision does not become a second appointment somewhere else on another day.
- Close to 200 customer tire sets racked between seasons. The off-season set stays at the shop instead of taking up a corner of the garage or the back of a shed. For a household running more than one vehicle, that is real floor space back.
- Rated 5.0 across 24 Google reviews. A small number of reviews, all of them from a shop that opened in September 2025, and the figure is quoted as it stands rather than rounded up into something grander.
- Winter compound stays flexible below roughly 7 degrees Celsius. All-season compounds stiffen around that point. The changeover date that matters is a temperature, not a month on the calendar, which is worth knowing before the first cold morning.
- Licensed MTO Motor Vehicle Inspection Station. Ontario Vehicle Safety Certificates are issued here, which covers a private sale, a re-registration, or a vehicle brought in from out of province.
- Approved repair facility for Canada General and Global Warranty. AutoNorth is also a certified Holman service shop and handles government and municipal fleets, which is the same standard of record-keeping applied to a family vehicle.
- A Toyota-certified Master Technician with hybrid certification. Owner Ryan Christadler trained at Centennial College, and the shop services all makes and models, gas, diesel and hybrid.
A Township on the Height of Land
Chisholm is one of the more unusual pieces of ground in Nipissing District. The township sits on the divide between the Great Lakes watershed and the Ottawa River watershed, so the water that falls on it leaves in two directions. The Wasi River runs west toward Lake Nipissing. Depot Creek runs into Lake Nosbonsing, a lake Chisholm shares with Bonfield and East Ferris, and which measures 11 km at its maximum length and 5 km at its widest.
- The settlement pattern follows the work that used to be here. Logging ran through the township from roughly the 1860s to the 1910s, and farming and sawmills followed it. The places people lived were placed by that work rather than by a road plan.
- Fossmill is the clearest example. Its sawmill closed after fires in 1934 and in 1936, and the community did not survive the closure. What was a working settlement inside living memory is now nothing at all.
- The rest never consolidated into a town. Alderdale, Booth's Landing, Chiswick, Grahamvale and Wasing are still on the map, but as pockets of housing rather than places with a commercial core. Chisholm has a municipal identity without a downtown.
- 1,312 people across 205.77 square kilometres. That is the 2021 Census count, up slightly from 1,291 in 2016. Growth, but not the kind that builds a main street.
- Which puts the weight on the vehicle. Groceries, appointments, school runs, work and parts all involve leaving the township. A vehicle that is not dependable in a place like this does not cause an inconvenience. It cancels the day.
None of that changes what a ball joint is. It changes what a failed one costs you. That is the entire argument for booking maintenance on your own schedule rather than the vehicle's, and for a shop that shows you photographs of the problem while there is still time to plan around it.
Services Worth Booking Before the Drive Gets Long
Distance, load and cold decide most of this list. AutoNorth handles all of it at 1520 Cholette St, on all makes and models, gas, diesel and hybrid.
Digital Inspections
Photos and video of your own vehicle, by text and email, approved from your phone.
Read moreCheck Engine & Diagnostics
What a warning light actually means, and what it costs to find out.
Read moreOil Changes
Gas and diesel, with a new filter, a 120-point visual inspection and a wash.
Read moreBrake Repair
Pads, rotors, calipers and lines, with the wear shown to you before anything is replaced.
Read moreSuspension & Steering
Struts, shocks, ball joints, tie rods, bushings and CV axles.
Read moreTires
21 brands stocked, plus mounting, balancing, puncture repair and changeovers.
Read moreEverything else is on the full services list, and the contact page has the map, the hours and the booking form.
Chisholm: Common Questions
How far is AutoNorth from Chisholm?
That depends which part of the township the drive starts from, because Chisholm has no single village centre to measure from. The route is the useful answer: out of the township to the Highway 11 corridor at Callander or the Highway 94 corridor through East Ferris, both of which are in neighbouring municipalities, then north into North Bay to 1520 Cholette St. Use the Get Directions button on this page and Google will measure the trip from your own driveway, which is more accurate than any single figure this page could publish.
Which way do people usually come in from Chisholm?
One of two corridors, decided by which side of the township you live on. Callander and East Ferris sit off Chisholm's northwest corner, and the routes toward North Bay pick up from those neighbouring municipalities: Highway 11 runs through Callander, and Highway 94 runs through East Ferris between Highway 654 near Callander and Highway 17 near Corbeil. Neither of those highways is inside Chisholm itself, so the first part of any trip is township roads out to whichever corridor is closer to you.
Can I approve repairs without driving back into North Bay?
Yes, and that is the point of the digital inspection report. Photos and video of your own vehicle are sent by both text and email, grouped by priority, and each item is approved or declined from a phone or a computer without a phone call. The shop runs AutoLeap, which also handles two-way text messaging, so a question about a specific line can be asked and answered in writing. For a driver who lives a drive away, that removes the second trip in entirely.
Can I leave the vehicle overnight instead of driving in twice?
Yes. There is an after-hours key drop at the Cholette St shop, so the vehicle can be left the night before and work starts first thing in the morning. It is usually the best option for anyone coming in from a township, because it turns a repair into one drive instead of two. AutoNorth also runs a customer shuttle including rides home, so mention that when you book if the job is going to take most of a day.
What will I be told about the price before I book?
The price for your vehicle, before you drive in. An oil change covers gas and diesel with a new filter, a 120-point visual inspection and a wash, and is quoted for your vehicle before you book. Diesel engines hold considerably more oil, so the number depends on what you drive. Call the shop with your year, make and model and AutoNorth will tell you the price for your vehicle before you book, not after the hood is up. Everything past the oil change is quoted before the work happens.
Can AutoNorth issue a safety certificate for a vehicle registered in Chisholm?
Yes. AutoNorth is a licensed MTO Motor Vehicle Inspection Station and issues Ontario Vehicle Safety Certificates. The licence is provincial, so where a vehicle is registered inside Ontario makes no difference to where it can be inspected or certified. Chisholm is in Nipissing District, and a station licensed in North Bay can certify a vehicle from anywhere in the province, whether it is for a private sale, a re-registration, or a vehicle brought in from out of province.
Book From Chisholm and Drive In Once
Call or text AutoNorth with what the vehicle is doing. Ask about the after-hours key drop or the shuttle when you book, and the whole job becomes one drive with the approvals handled from home.