The federal government announced this week it will invest $1 million into a digital recruitment campaign to bring more women, and in particular Indigenous women, into the skilled trades.
The announcement was made July 4 at the Electrical Joint Training Committee (EJTC) facility in Port Coquitlam, where aspiring electricians come from all over the country to get classroom and on-the-job training.
“Women in general, they don’t see the trades as an option for them. And oftentimes, they are discouraged by their families from pursuing such a course,” Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam MP Ron McKinnon told The Tri-City News.
“So we want to help change that view so that women do recognize it as a viable and good career choice for them and their daughters.”
Working with Glacier Media, the campaign looks to recruit over 50 female apprentices to bump up enrolment at the training facility to 20% by 2021. That would be a significant improvement over the 8.6% female makeup of the current student body.
Throughout the announcement a group of about a dozen students looked on from the stairs and balcony. An all-Indigenous class, they came from across the country earlier this year to start working their way towards a Red Seal endorsement as an electrician.
Some stood on a balcony looking down at the crowd, others lined up on a staircase, a living backdrop for the announcement.
As McKinnon and Port Coquitlam mayor Brad West spoke about the importance of bringing women into the trades, not all the students escaped the lime light.
Wakenniosta Rosie Cooper, 23-years-old and one of the classes star students, assembled an entire lightbulb switch and socket in the time it took the politicians to wrap up.
Cooper, who belongs to the Mohawks of Kanehsatake near Oka, Que., came out west with her family in 2008. Both her biological and step father were ironworkers, and while she always liked working with her hands, as a young student she was drawn to math and biology.
By the end of high school she wanted to be a veterinarian. But after a stint at the University of the Fraser Valley while working in a pet shop, she looked to change course.
When she found the EJTC program in Port Coquitlam, it just made sense.
“I love the science, the math — magnetism is crazy,” she said.
Of Cooper’s 12 classmates, three are women, but that hasn’t held her back, she told The Tri-City News.
“The men are a lot more open about sexual harassment,” she said, stressing how comfortable she feels amongst her new friends. “It’s much more open to women.”
Some of the other students like Joel Winegarden, an Ojibwe who grew up in Nelson, and Jared Turenne, a Métis from Nanaimo, have had a more tortuous path into the program — both having struggled with addiction.
After coming to Metro Vancouver to seek treatment, they quickly starting supporting each other and became friends.
“I wanted to get my life back on track,” said Turenne, who used to operate heavy equipment. “I told Joel about this program and we both signed up.”
These students are only at the beginning of a five year course in which they will bounce between apprenticeships and class work. But many of them are gearing to go.
For Cooper, that means specializing in big industrial projects like the Seaspan shipyards.
“I want to work with big things,” she said, in a tip to her ironworker heritage.
“Oh, yeah, I’m ready.”
