The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world and unrepresented communities as we continue to strive for a more diverse workforce. Join us as we celebrate Women Empowerment Month to learn about the incredible contributions of Women in the welding industry and our communities.
Embarking upon the raw and revealing pathways of Jackie Morris's life, we uncover the story of a woman who transformed early motherhood and a welding torch into beacons of empowerment. Her narrative, punctuated by resilience and advocacy champions the strength to navigate the uncharted waters of a non-traditional educational journey, and treading the tightrope between work and raising children. As a mother, welder, educator, and artist, she embodies the spirit of perseverance, whether it's through her impactful support for inclusivity or her role as a leader in her field. Join us as we celebrate her contributions to the welding community and the sparks of inspiration she ignites for those forging their own paths!
Follow Jackie:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/modern.jemz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-e-m-i/
Website: https://jemsmind.com/
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
There is no better time to be a member! The CWB Association membership is new, improved and focused on you. We offer a FREE membership with a full suite of benefits to build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/become-a-member
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world and unrepresented communities as we continue to strive for a more diverse workforce. Join us as we celebrate Women Empowerment Month to learn about the incredible contributions of Women in the welding industry and our communities.
Embarking upon the raw and revealing pathways of Jackie Morris's life, we uncover the story of a woman who transformed early motherhood and a welding torch into beacons of empowerment. Her narrative, punctuated by resilience and advocacy champions the strength to navigate the uncharted waters of a non-traditional educational journey, and treading the tightrope between work and raising children. As a mother, welder, educator, and artist, she embodies the spirit of perseverance, whether it's through her impactful support for inclusivity or her role as a leader in her field. Join us as we celebrate her contributions to the welding community and the sparks of inspiration she ignites for those forging their own paths!
Follow Jackie:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/modern.jemz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-e-m-i/
Website: https://jemsmind.com/
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
There is no better time to be a member! The CWB Association membership is new, improved and focused on you. We offer a FREE membership with a full suite of benefits to build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/become-a-member
Alright, I checked, checked, I'm good. So I'm Max Ron. Max Max Ron. Shitwb Association Welding Podcast podcast podcast. Today we have a really cool guest Welding Podcast. The show is about to begin. Attention, welders in Canada Looking for top quality welding supplies.
Speaker 1:Look no further than Canada Welding Supply With a vast selection of premium equipment, safety gear and consumables. Cws has got you covered. They offer fast and reliable shipping across the country. And here's the best part All podcast listeners get 10% off any pair of welding gloves. Can you believe that? Use code CWB10 at checkout when placing your next order. Visit canadaweldingsupplyca now. Visit canadaweldingsupply, your trusted welding supplier. Happy welding. Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association Podcast. My name is Max Ron and, as always, I'm looking for the coolest people I can find to bring on the show. And there ain't no cooler dude than I know, than Jackie Morris. She has been a wonderful friend and colleague to me since I've been here at the association. And, jackie, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1:Right Max thanks for having me on. Yeah, you bet we talk pretty often, whether it's through association or not, through social medias or not, or the world, but I'm very happy to finally have you on the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks, I'm glad to be here. I think I needed to do some things on me before I actually showed up, and I feel pretty good about myself right now, so that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1:Well, I love your wearing all the swag. You got the hats, you got the glasses. You showed off the tukulel earlier. You got all sorts of cool stuff. But just you know, if you're a member or work with a local chapter, you also could have all these wonderful things. You know, plug, plug, plug.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I was actually at an event recently and they were like can I have this? And I'm like, yeah, you can have a hat and a pen and all the things that we have in the seed boxes, which are fantastic. Sue doesn't love some free swag, but also it's nice to represent and have that conversation piece for people too, like where'd you get that? That's always something that I get.
Speaker 1:And it's gonna be nice, right. So this is an argument that comes up all the time. You know, within the company it's like what's the point of swag? You know, there's some companies that are very swag conscious and they do a great job of branding. Others are a little resilient on the swag, you know. But from your point of view, you know, like as a chapter chair for your chapter and in Ontario, and a part-time educator and all these things that you do, where do you think, do you think, there's a place for swag?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's free advertisement the way I look at it and it's also a sense of pride too, like you know. You feel like you're a part of something I know personally for myself. There was a time when I was feeling a little detached from the welding industry and the association really kind of like pulled me back in and made me feel like I belonged again. And the swag is nice, because somebody might ask you know what does that mean? And then they it's a conversation starter, especially if you're kind of worried about meeting new people and starting conversations if that's not your jam, it's. I like that about it.
Speaker 3:It breaks the ice yeah, yeah, it breaks the ice and I love the swag. I love and you guys pick great swag, because I wear hats every day. I wear sunglasses every day. Tukes, if it was, what's it called? If it was a natural fiber like a cotton or a wool, I'd even wear it welding. Maybe we can work on that for the future.
Speaker 1:Well, the sweaters. That's something that we always have to be conscious about. So when we do bunny hugs or hoodies, I always have to talk to like the distributors and be like cotton only. And they're like well, we've got great deals on Paulie, I'm like this one. I can't cheap out on. If I'm gonna give out a welding sweater, it's gotta be cotton Like. I mean, I can't be like oh, this one was a better deal. Enjoy melting, you know.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:All right. So let's get going here with Jackie, because you have a wonderful story. I love your story and I feel like it's one that deserves to be heard because it's not necessarily unique. There's a lot of women people across this country who kind of follow a path and sometimes get a little lost, and I feel like you are a great example of coming out the other end. You know If there ever is an other end that we do come out of. But, jackie, let's start with where you're born. Where's your roots? What do you call home?
Speaker 3:I was born in Richmond Hill, ontario, grew up in Aurora, ontario. They don't have a hospital, hence why I was born in Richmond Hill.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I grew up in this small, relatively affluent town. Doesn't mean my family was extremely affluent or anything like that. My parents were hard workers and we just landed in a town north of where their parents grew up. Kind of the way it works you can't afford where your parents live and then you move a little bit further away every generation and that's kind of what's happened for me. But yeah, aurora was good to me, for I was there for about 30 years.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay so quite a bit, so quite. You know, very often young people growing up in small towns are like can't wait to get the F out of here, you know, and go like go into the big city or something, something you know, you were there until 30, you know what held you there.
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting because I totally had that I need to get the F out of this town. But I ended up having my eldest daughter when I was 18 years old and I made some choices and the choice was to have her grow up in a stable family home and that included the tribe of my family. I wasn't at home all the time, like I did do a lot of travel for work, or I just didn't work close to home, so I just stay out for a few days and then come back and I felt comfortable doing that. Because who do you trust your kids with more than your family that you love and grew up with and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3:Maybe Santa, but Maybe Santa, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know. He seems sus With his illegal workshop anyways, and you know, yeah yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:That sounds like capitalism and all of white privilege, Santa, unless Santa's black, and I'd be all for that.
Speaker 1:That'd be fine. It's Kwanzaa, right?
Speaker 3:It's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:So you said you grew up in Aurora and then you stuck around until 30, having the kids a part of it. But let's go back up and lead up to that point. So you're in school, you're in a high school. What was it that you were planning on doing with your career? Because you're a welding technologist. Now you got your advanced diploma in welding technologists, you've worked as a welder, you have welding tickets. But way before that there was a young Jackie in high school who had big dreams. What were those big dreams?
Speaker 3:It's funny you say that, because I don't even feel like I had those dreams, max. I felt like I was that kid that wasn't destined for post-secondary, because I was always in the special education streams, because for a long time it was. You know why can't you keep up with the language or whatever it is, so they kept on doing all kinds of tests and they're all inconclusive and you know why is she the way she is? And I just threw all of those things, all of those negative it's not even negative talk, just talk around a child. So I was the child and you can't be talking about the stuff around me.
Speaker 3:The unknown, I felt like yeah, or like I felt like I wasn't, you know, as good as the other kids, or like that wasn't destined for me because I wasn't capable to do the curriculum the way the?
Speaker 3:curriculum. Yeah, yeah, whatever that thing is. I mean, I'm speculating now that I'm pretty sure I've had ADHD and I'm on a path right now to figure that out with my doctors and things like that. But it's interesting being that kid and feeling like you're never good enough. So I just thought I would finish high school and just get a job. That's kind of what I thought I was going to do as a young person Probably something manual labor, because I was always good with working with my hands and I was, like you know, changing the tires with my dad and doing all that stuff around the house. But yeah, I did not feel like I had a dream. But if we're going to talk about the dream dream, when I was five I wanted to be a judge. I don't know if that is ever going to come to fruition, but you know.
Speaker 1:Hey, never know man Throw it out in the universe. You never know, you never know. I mean you get to judge welds, hey.
Speaker 3:Exactly. You know what? There you go, I made it, I made it.
Speaker 1:You brought up a couple of really interesting points there, so I'm going to try to pull up some information out of there. First of all, what did your parents do?
Speaker 3:My father was in like computer, computer graphics, computer like.
Speaker 3:He had a really interesting career.
Speaker 3:He never went to any post secondary because he was also told a very similar story, like when he was in high school if you wanted to take XYZ classes you were in an academic stream destined for university and they kept on telling him he was not destined for that.
Speaker 3:However, he wanted to take things like advanced calculus because he's a super smart guy and took all the programming that his engineer buddy ended up taking. But he landed in kind of like at first he was one of the guys that helped do the teleconferencing for like the courthouse downtown and helped like connect people via actual cables because that's how we did it back then and dishes and things. And then he had a long career with ATI, which is now AMD, which computer graphics, software, sound cards, graphic cards, stuff like that. And my mom was an early childhood educator running programs through like the YMCA for very many years. And then she was working as a director with the Ontario Earlier Center for many years after that for like the development not just for the children but for the education of the adults, of the parents or the caregiver for the children.
Speaker 1:All right. So we're laying down this foundation that in your home you know there's not a huge focus on post-secondary. You know your dad had his struggles, your mom had some post-secondary to get into the EC world. But you know those. Those are more like like white collar but you know like introductory white collar type jobs, right. So for yourself, having you know this environment where they're like Jackie's not going to get into university made that might not be her path and you start looking at the blue collar world. You know what you call the Joe jobs. You know like they get out there, use your hands and get on it. Was that seen in your family as like a detriment or is that? Was that like a oh, it's a step down at all, or was it like just make the best of what you got? You know what were the conversations like as you're nearing graduation about your future.
Speaker 3:Um, I kind of feel like my parents let me do a lot of my soul searching alone, not because they didn't want to have input, because they heck did. Of course they did, but I wouldn't let them. Like I was, like I'm capable, I can do whatever I need to do. When I was in high school, like I made the guidance counselor appointments and when I got told by the guidance counselor like you can't take that because, because the sillyest reasons, that's not going to help you with your future, this and that, and I would just walk away pissed off because I was, I was like you can't tell me what to do. I always had this. I'm not going to say I have a complex, I just would question it for the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what people would call it, but I don't like to call it that personally myself, because I just needed to have answers to the questions. Why are we doing it that way? If you can give me a reasonable response, then maybe I'll think about it, but if you're telling me, because you say so, well, that's not reasonable. What makes you the person that knows all everything right? So I I constantly was looking for answers and I actually, through high school, in grade 10, I decided to take a different path, in that I went to an alternative program because I was sick and tired of the authoritarian like way that the system is.
Speaker 3:Like I'm a teacher, or I'm older than you, I know more than you, and I'm like that's not necessarily true, you know more here, but I might know more there, and how do you know what's best for me? So the alternative program actually let me go to work full time, and I went to school one day a week, which was really good for me because I've always liked to work. Um, I did that for up until the last semester of grade 12. And at this point I had said, well, maybe it has changed. I was kind of a naive response Maybe the system has changed and I'll go back for my last semester.
Speaker 1:Well, and you kind of want to graduate with your friends and your click and stuff too. Right, Probably that was in there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, and just kind of because, like a friend of mine actually transferred from one of her school she was at to come to the school I was at and I was like I'm out because this place sucks, or whatever.
Speaker 3:I was a teenager, you know, and so when I came back I still found the struggles and that's actually where I started to say like hey, there's a metal shop down the shop hallway, because I was one of the kids that took, you know, automotive in grade nine, which was super cool, but I didn't even get introduced to the electrical shop or the metal shop. None of them were even explained to me as an option to take and I only knew of them because I'd go down that shop hallway because the band room was to the left and the shops were to the right. And in elementary school I did play like clarinet and bass clarinet and all that stuff and I got into bands. So I had noticed them, but by the time I was actually interested in taking those programs. They're like you need a prerequisite, you don't have the prerequisites to take these classes. You missed the boat, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm like okay, well, I'm not taking grade nine electrical. It's the last semester of high school.
Speaker 1:So you graduated high school, right? Yeah, you pulled yourself out of the work program, so it sounds like your last semester probably wasn't the best semester. Did you just kind of? I still worked? Yeah, I just I still worked.
Speaker 3:And then I just did different timeships and I actually the programming was you need to take three classes in high school to be considered a full-time student. I tried for the first couple of weeks I tried some different programming because I came in halfway through the year. They're like everything's filled up. You can't take all of these things you're interested in. So I tried a few different things and then finally I said I would like to just do part time. I only need two credits to graduate. That's all I'm going to take. And then I got met with how do you know you're going to pass the course? And I said well, if I don't pass one of these courses, because I've passed every single one you've ever thrown at me, and the only one I never I didn't pass was I didn't show up, so I didn't expect to pass that class. And how dare you tell me that I'm not capable of passing this? And they're my consequences. I can go to summer school. I can do something else.
Speaker 1:So you know, let's not you worry about me, let me worry about me, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and so. I got out at 17,. I think I graduated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when's your birthday.
Speaker 3:July.
Speaker 1:July. So, yeah, you would have been 17, turning 18 in the summer, yeah. So so you're out of high school and you I mean high school is a crazy place Like I didn't have a great time in school. Even though I did well in school, I got suspended a lot, kicked out. You know, I went to a different couple different elementary schools, yeah, and meanwhile it was like I never failed, I never had any problems with the courses. It was like the just the system itself.
Speaker 1:And I'm not and I'm not into homeschooling or anything. I'm like not anti establishment like that, but I am, and I have been raised my whole life to question authority. That is something that my parents made very clear. My parents are socialists from a communist country and to them it's like if it doesn't have a context for the greater good, second guess it. You know, like, if it's just going to be for X, okay, maybe, but if it's also good for Y and Z and A and B, then that's. That's a better argument, right? So high school was very much like that for me and I got put kind of into the misfit stream. You know like you get you're just like one of the misfits, and they can be for a number of reasons, because high school's a like. It's like Mad Max beyond Thunderdome high school right, and it's very much clicky. And if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know what we're talking about, welcome to. You're a jock or you were very preppy or you were rich. Because, for the rest of us it was a escape.
Speaker 1:Like all the people that, I'm like high school is great. It's like okay, settle down rich kid, but anyways they peeked at high school.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But you know, this is something and this is going to go off on a tangent. We'll come back when I want to go down this tangent. Because one of the things that industry is trying to do now and I would say industry at large, the welding industry is trying to glamorize welding, to be like hey, it's not just dirty, it's not just rough, it's not just working with your hands, it's also for the straight A students, it's also for the jocks, it's also for the privileged. We need everyone on board and the messaging goes very much that way. But I would say it's going too far, because I've actually seen some, some things come across my table where people are trying to push things towards the.
Speaker 1:We don't want the misfits, we don't want that part that historically has been there because the because the jock that didn't get along with the misfit in grade 10 is going to be the same welder jock that doesn't get along with the misfit welder at 30. And it's going to be a disruptive workplace and and and. If there's too many misfits at work, like the tattooed, long-eared weirdos at the welding shop, then you're not going to get the clean cut people to come and be comfortable in that environment because it's too misfit. That, for me, is a big hard. No, that's a mistake.
Speaker 3:That's a huge mistake, because the reality is that we are not the same people at 16 that we are at 30. Also, you know, we need people who want to get down and dirty and do the hard work and, realistically, even somebody who is destined for the white collar position, let's say, as the engineer or the technologist who's working in an office, let's say, they will do their jobs better if they understand what every level does. So maybe what it should be is that we should be introducing it as you need to take these earlier steps and learn how to live in the area of actually creating the stuff whatever it is and then work our way through so that people have more empathy for each level and vice versa.
Speaker 1:Vice versa yeah.
Speaker 3:That the people on the side of things, that they want to use their hands to be the actual, tangible creator, like our metal fabricators or welders, those people, they should also get a taste for what the engineers, the technologists, all those people do too, because then they'll actually understand more why you need to control your electrodes, why you need to follow your procedures precisely or within your range and not be like whatever what the engineers know or what have you, because everyone has a place within. We always talk about ladders. I don't like using the terminology in ladder, because then it seems like somebody's higher than the other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think it's sequential. You need somebody to plan it and pay for it before you actually get the person to make it, but it's still sequential. You can't have the building without the welder, you can't have the welder without the guys planning it or the people planning it. So we're all necessary and making a more inclusive environment so everybody can learn that it is a place for everyone, and we need to have more empathy for everyone within that sequence. That makes more sense, because if they end up succeeding in doing what you were talking about there, then we won't have anyone to actually create the product. And then where are we? Yeah, and more more, maintain it.
Speaker 1:I knew this tangent would get you stoked. I knew it would do it because it's a reality and I think that you know it creates a dichotomy where it's like okay, if you're a welder, your level, your, your, your, your. I guess success point, like what you're looking to as a plateau is to get out of welding someday. You know, climb that welding ladder and you will be afforded the success of perhaps becoming a supervisor, getting behind a desk or maybe going back to school and becoming an engineer. Like you've worked your way out of the mud into the magic zone, right, and then, on the other hand, you create this. Why would an engineer ever come down to the welder's level? You know like I can tell you right, go ahead.
Speaker 3:I can tell you why and why somebody would want to go either way. It has everything to do with the stress level of actually understanding the jobs that these people do. If they actually understand the gravity of the work they are doing, then people would understand why the engineer might want to take a step back and drop the hood. Because, guess what? The only thing I need to worry about is myself and my own procedure and what I need to do here and now, instead of taking care of the whole picture and being responsible for the whole thing. And if you are an ethical person, which you should be in this industry, whatever level you fall within, it is it's like therapy you drop the hood and you feel good. And same thing. A welder might never want to go up because managing people is hard. No, and why is it?
Speaker 1:up.
Speaker 3:Being a welder.
Speaker 1:Your job is your job. If you love your job, do your job and be the best at your job. Success needs to be personal. Success is not compared against somebody else. Success is a personal journey and if my personal journey is to you know, work from seven to three thirty every day in manufacturing plants so I can have time with my kids on the weekend and blah, blah, blah, rocket, rocket that's awesome because, I'll tell you, my path to what I considered success in my life has been at the expense of my family and the people around me, and that is a choice. That's a choice, right, that was something that I had to do, which is, you know, it does Greek. I hate the term regret, but it does create that hindsight of, of, of, like nostalgia, like I missed out on birthdays, I missed out on kids, stuff I wasn't there for, like you know, certain parts of their lives because I was out chasing this career that I got. Okay, I don't get that stuff back, right, like it's gone.
Speaker 3:Actually, that's something that when I met my my now husband, we had conversations where he would say things like you've made a lot of sacrifices. And I beg to differ. I would tell him that I've made a lot of choices because the sacrifices saying that I have missed out on something. But if I've chosen to do it, then I know, I actively know what I'm missing out on or what I'm not missing out on because I'm choosing one or the other, or what is that success for me? Like we just said, so it's. It's about making choices and understanding that time is precious. You're not guaranteed tomorrow and you know your job, it's. It's interesting A lot of people talk about being dispense expendable, like we could replace you, and I'm like I don't think that's true anymore because I sure I can replace a warm body if that's all you were in your job.
Speaker 3:But really, is that who you are? Are you not proud of what you do? Are you not proud of what you put out? Your quality? They can't replace necessarily and they will never replace you because you are uniquely individual. Everyone is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I hear that saying like everyone is replaceable, because you know, it's true, Like I mean from a bare bones level, it's true. But I like to look at it like, like, if, if, who's replacing who?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, who like if, if, if and this is my personal journey every time I've had a boss, be like, you know we can replace you. It's like, yeah, I feel like I'm the winner, because the fact that you even said that makes me want to replace you as my boss, because I can have a better boss that will give me more opportunities. Because obviously we're at some type of a mimp in past year of this conversations even happening, because the whole conversation of, well, everyone's replaceable, that goes both ways, right. Like I mean, I always tell young people they're like, tell me that they're not happy with their jobs Like bounce, just bounce. Like start, don't quit and be unemployed. That's not cool, you know. Start looking around, start patting that resume, start taking some courses, start doing some night school. Like, what do you want to do? Get the out of there. If you don't like it, that's on you, right. Like, get out of there.
Speaker 3:Yep, I'll quote my buddy, paul Taylor. He always says my toolbox has wheels. Absolutely, pick up and move. Yeah, create your own path, like if you're you're building your career. You're not at that position to help those people design and build whatever they are doing. You're designing and building yourself, creating your resume, creating what you want to be. So if it's bothering you, how much time do you want that on your resume for or do you not want it on your resume? If you don't want it on your resume, leave right away, walk out the door. But if you want it on the resume and you're like, okay, I'm committed to six months or I'm committed to a year or whatever it is you want, you're doing it for you. You're not doing it for for somebody else, you're doing it for your growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sometimes you take those jobs that you're like I don't like this job, but it's a skill that I need to acquire and I'm going to stay here till I acquire this skill and bite down and I mean, those are the hard choices that you have to make to advance and and that's it Like. I mean, I have found that the people that I respect for where they are and what they've done all had a dark period where they were doing something they did not like to get to where they needed to be right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and those are the choices that we were talking about. You got to make choices because life's not easy and it's not easy to make choices, and sometimes the choices aren't. They don't look shiny as soon as you step into them, but it's for the bigger picture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Now, and that's where you can reduce regrets. Yeah, and that's why.
Speaker 1:I don't like the term regrets. I don't really regret anything. My life has been chaos. So, like, what's to regret? It's like it's just like you said, it's just one choice to the next. The only time it's it's hurtful because you can have hurt without regret is that when I talked to my kids now as adults and they're like you know, we missed having you around and blah, blah, blah and it's like, yeah, but now we have now because now that I'm, you know, now I have lots more time right, because I put that investment in early right.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:Now you know we're we're talking about, you know, kind of like that misfit stream and how that's. It's. It's kind of a it's a whole bubble that it's hard to talk about because you don't like labels, we don't want to use labels, we don't want to make people feel like, oh, I'm on this side, because then that just creates the argument on the other side of like, well, you're there and I'm over here, and we want to create these environments, these workplaces that, like you said really well, that are empathetic Everyone's empathetic to each other to and acknowledges that self-awareness that we're all necessary here and none of us is more or less necessary, because I've had people pull that out on me and shops as a manager and they're like my job, my job, and I always got to let everybody know the most important person in the shop is a saw guy. So, before everyone spouts off, go give the saw guy a handshake, because with, if, if he screws up, we're all dead in the water. So, like, you know, like, and he's probably the lowest paid guy in the floor.
Speaker 1:So like, let's, let's remember where the respect goes. It's not about you know a tickets or or or who you are. It's about the work we got to get the widgets out and everyone's a part of the widget train here. So now for yourself, coming out of high school, you know you're kind of looking at these. Well, you know these welding shops and it sounds like you kind of have welding on the brain a little bit. Is that a thing? Was it happening?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had taken a construction techniques program in the high school. I was able to. Uh, I guess I didn't need a prerequisite for that one.
Speaker 1:Um well, it's just wood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, sorry, it sucks. If you cut it wrong you can't weld it back up, anyway, um, I had just seen the metal shop and thought that would be pretty cool. I was the crafty kid. I liked doing arts and crafts and stuff as a kid too, so I was interested. So it was at the top of my mind kind of. But not really, I was just being a kid, working multiple jobs just so I could have money, so I could party on the weekends, do all those things, take care of myself. You know and I was that person that if I wanted 10 bucks it'd be like you know, dad, can I cut the grass or can I shovel the driveway or whatever it is, cause I just learned that there wasn't lots of money available. My parents didn't just hand it out, um, so I just knew that I wanted money to do things that I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:So you're contemplating these things and you get pregnant. Yeah, I am right, because, like this is the window, right? So like you're done high school, you're, you're. I don't know if you get your first kind of trades gig yet, but you know what point did you get pregnant and and what starts happening there, like how did that go down?
Speaker 3:So well, that was an interesting situation. My boyfriend at the time was living with my parents because he wasn't in a great situation himself and actually that whole experience with him was kind of a good one. That helped open my eyes too, because he is native and Tegan, and Native Canadian and in Tegan. So I had kind of started to see a different world, because Aurora is a very, let's say, white washed affluence base so you don't, you know, there was two kids with any sort of ethnic looking background in the city. So I had kind of experienced life a little bit through his eyes and and that really like in terms of like discrimination, Kind of the other parts, you know the people of color problems.
Speaker 3:Talking about not moving out. Well, I totally did move out with him for a little bit of time. We lived at like Eglinton and when was it? Dufferin and Eglinton area? I wasn't like great neighborhood or what have you. I was the person that kind of took care of most of the, the bills. I kept working, I did all the, I did all the things and then that ended up falling through getting pregnant, living at home with my parents. He decided to take off and try to, you know, make something of himself because he felt that urgency to support. Ultimately, it turned into an abusive situation where you know I was, I would get anxious when the phone would ring because he would call me and there would be a lot of verbal and emotional Abuse going on, to the point where he would say things to me like you know, if you don't come and do what I'm asking of you, I'm gonna hurt myself.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of growing up manipulation yeah.
Speaker 3:Absolutely and I mean I can't like. I feel I always felt for this man because he also grew up in a really rough Situation. You know his family life was not great. He was one of like nine or ten kids and some of them are adopted out, some of them were in the system. You know there's a lot of trauma response when it comes to abuse right.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep. So there, there was a lot going on there. Thank goodness I had the mother I do have, who would spend time like deescalating me on the phone afterwards and things like that. It's finally to the point where I was not working. I was pregnant, not working, couldn't find a job because I was pregnant and 18, so Turned into just trying to take care of myself, trying to get through all of this stuff that's happening with my, my, my sperm donor. If we're gonna call him that my baby daddy, I don't know. I.
Speaker 3:I I. What are you gonna do like?
Speaker 1:yeah, like I mean, you're pregnant, you're at home. You kind of feel alone now, right, like it's almost like you'd rather be alone now. To be honest, you know.
Speaker 3:Well, and I was definitely pulled out of my friend groups because my friends were still like just finishing high school or party. Well, yeah, they're getting ready to go to university. So I basically like recluse and lost all of those people because I was in on a different path at that point. Ultimately, it came down to me telling this person that you know I you can't, you have no power over me. If you do something, it's not my fault. You know I do not want you to hurt yourself, but you can't try to manipulate me into doing something that's not good for our child. Like you want me to come and live in a wet, dingy basement apartment when I could stay here with the stocked fridge and yeah start pursuing a future and all of those things.
Speaker 3:So I made that decision and then ultimately it came down to I never wanted to stop him from seeing his daughter.
Speaker 3:He, he would call and come to the house Figure around you know yeah, yeah, and I and I had said to him I said I'm not gonna stop you, but I want you to come to my house because I felt safe at home with and my father had to be home, or somebody my father, my brother, somebody had to be home with me during that time. They didn't need to be with us. But like, yeah, and Ultimately it came down to he would call, make an appointment, not show up, and then not call.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I finally just said you know, my daughter deserves far more than this. She deserves stability. So you can see her whenever you want, but you will not be considered daddy. You'll be a friend of the family until I deem otherwise. And then he dropped off the face of the earth for many years, which which is fine. I'm an inner out kind of person. You're either in the kids life or you're out. You're not here to screw around. They're already gonna be screwed up. Enough as it is, whether you, whether you're in or out.
Speaker 1:Well and it's tough like so. You know my, my ex-wife. She got pregnant at 18, right, I was 21 and she was from the affluent family with the state and I was the Person, the color coming in, that all craziness, but in the end it was. You know, I was in right, I was. That's the differences that I was in and you know we didn't laugh. We got to, we got divorced on the road. Down the road we made a go of it and had a couple kids.
Speaker 1:But Having that, that that inner out mentality when kids are little, it's, it's it's kind of necessary because you got to have boundaries and that's really hard to do when you're young. You're you, you you're still not an adult, you're still like kind of child brain and boundaries are a very tricky thing and honestly, I'm coming up on 50 and I'm learning about boundaries is an is a never-ending thing and that's usually one of the biggest pieces I coach to young people that reach out to me for help with anything. I try to just relate it to boundaries. You know, if you can set some simple boundaries for yourself and for your interactions, you will make your life so much easier and and a boundaries much easier concept than it is confrontation or Deescalation, or you know, you know these dialogues. No, you can, you can just put a line in the sand and say no, you know what, just know, just know, just know. And I'm not even gonna talk about it, I'm not crossing that line, it's just no right.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, and it's interesting you say that, because I even struggle with boundaries now and I'm not quite 40, and it is definitely something that I even struggle with myself but there were these. This was a boundary that I wasn't willing to sacrifice, and a lot of that had to do with I Believe that my daughter deserved more, and she was the segue for me to, because I thought she deserved more. That's when I went to school, that's when I started to try to pursue something more than what would be that Joe job, because she deserved more. Through my journey, I've learned that I deserve it too. It just took that jumpstart, I guess, or or maybe it would have taken me longer if I didn't have her to learn that, but that's why I like I mean trauma goes both ways.
Speaker 1:It can be the great fire, right and fires an interesting thing. Fire will either burn the house down or heat it, you know.
Speaker 1:It's, it's one of the two. So you know Now what, what happens. Then you know you have your baby, you're, you're trying to establish you know what Assemblance of a life. You lose all your friends. I mean. I just tell that that just happens If you're lucky enough.
Speaker 1:I was very lucky in that there was a whole bunch of teen pregnancies at that time amongst our group, I guess, like no one knew what contraception was in 1998, but a lot of babies were born and so we were lucky that we had quite a few other team Parent moms situations around us that we had friends with. You know. So that that's nice to have a little pregnant community. When your kids because the adults all abandon you, right, adults are just like, oh, you're dirty now or you're broken, or you I heard so much of you ruined your life, like over and over, you've ruined your life. It's like, okay, I don't need that energy Around me, I'd rather hang out with the other pregnant people that we're all just trying to be hopeful. And and when you love, and you love your kids, like I mean, doesn't matter if you're 18 or you're 80, you love your kids, it's that's, that's the great equalizer right Now absolutely for you now what?
Speaker 1:what's? What's the path to get into school? What do you do?
Speaker 3:So I spent the first two years of my daughter's life basically developing her. We spent and that is all because my parents were so Great to be able to support us. Now I did have a part-time job. I worked on the weekends at the local kennel so I had I Took care of dogs and cats and you know anything that was in the kennel and actually that was kind of Going back to we. What we talked about before.
Speaker 3:That was kind of one of the original, maybe past that I was gonna take, because when I was younger I did horseback ride. I owned a couple horses Only because my parents got inheritance from their parents passing away. That's the only way we'd actually be able to afford that kind of stuff. So I did love the animals and I actually thought maybe I'd become a vet tech or something like that and Just going through the motions and the abuse that you take in that industry too, like you think the animals have a bad man, people with a bleeding heart. They're just, they're volunteering all day long because you only get paid for four hours but we were there for like eight, things like that, just to make sure we got all the things done properly. So I Did that and at the Two-year ish marker just before that 18 months, I started thinking okay, well, what am I gonna do, because I don't have?
Speaker 1:Again, I'm gonna go yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, am I gonna go to school and become that vet tech? Is that what the the, the job is? So at that point I was thinking, okay, my high school stuff was like okay, I don't have the best marks, I didn't have the worst marks, you know because I didn't care because, it was. Who cares about Shakespeare? No offense, shakespeare can get you sometimes, but it wasn't for me and I Took a general arts and science program through Seneca College because that was I basically was leafing through. What will they not say no to?
Speaker 1:yeah, what's the guaranteed entrance?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, exactly, exactly. So. It was the one year general arts and science program and I I signed up and I Got my daughter into like subsidized childcare Thank goodness, because I couldn't afford the childcare and she went to school at their lab school on site. So I basically dropped her off and then I could walk. If you've ever been to Seneca King campus, they have a beautiful, they have a lake, they have a beautiful rolling hills. It's a beautiful place. So it was perfect. She got to go to forest school. I got to go to college and start kind of Finding myself again, because who was I? Well, I was a up to no good teenager. That's what everybody said, I know you're a mom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and I. I never really thought that I was up to no good because I always had a job, I was always doing the things.
Speaker 1:But whatever you get labeled and Come on, you did some bad things.
Speaker 3:Of course.
Speaker 1:I can't play that car. I always had a job, I always did good, yeah. But I also know that I did come to my critiques honestly. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I wouldn't say that I didn't do things that people offer, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:But now you're at Seneca, seneca, seneca, or Seneca, seneca, seneca.
Speaker 3:Seneca is very much like the York, toronto and York Region area where there's like multiple campuses that they offer all kinds of college programming, but the multiple campuses is to help for people who can't commute.
Speaker 1:Okay, I see. So now you're in in this course and You're trying to figure out, like these are usually like lead-in courses to. By the time you're done this, you're gonna now pick a major and pursue that right. What was what was going on with you there?
Speaker 3:Okay. So the yeah, the program is basically you know all the general education classes that you have to take when you pick the program you want to take. That's basically the program. I took all the general classes, good. So in my mind I was like, okay, let's get the English and the computers and these gen eds out of the way and have some fun Kind of figure out where I want to go, because I had no idea. I had no idea.
Speaker 1:And you're still young. You're only 20, right, like I mean yeah yeah, exactly, and so I.
Speaker 3:I was in there, I was enjoying these classes, just getting like great marks, because I enjoyed it, and that was kind of like the Aha moment for me, that I didn't hate Learning. I just didn't like the system that I had to learn in when I was younger. So I really started to love education and post-secondary education. I worked at the college as well. I did like Facilities, stuff cleaning, I worked in the gym, you know swiping cards and all that thing to Try to make the most of my time at school, because you know they do also have things like your schedule. You're here five days a week or four days a week, but there's a five-hour break between one after another. I'm sitting here going. Well, I'm not not leaving.
Speaker 3:I had a bless pass, I'm not leaving it. If you've ever seen Seneca King, it's in the middle of nowhere. There's nowhere to go, so I that's why I picked up the work and through that work it gave me some access to the campus that people didn't always get access to. One of the things that it gave me access to was actually the underwater skills program indoor pool. They had Like a 40-foot reverse silo is what I would call it, a whole pit in and this is where the guys would learn, or the people would come in and learn how to start their underwater skills training. So I had the. I was so lucky I got to go in and clean their toilets awesome.
Speaker 1:But at least they got to see the facility that was really a facility that just got shut down last year as well, which is very sad.
Speaker 3:Yes, very sad. I I really think that the college is missing the mark on that. They it's gonna be a detriment to industry. I believe I know quite a few commercial divers or former commercial divers because of these programming, because I Fell in love with the idea of the lake, I'd go down and I'd watch these guys or these people, because there were, you know, one female per year. Pretty much is very similar to welding. There's not very many female, but I got to watch them do underwater welding. I got to watch them do all kinds of cool stuff and that, I think, is where the interest in welding kind of clicked, because I'm sitting here watching people weld underwater. I'm watching them use the really I don't even know these are Coated electrodes that they can weld underwater with it's. It's all SMAW welding. But I didn't really know any of this world. I never even thought about welding until I saw this happening and I'm like welding. Then you start looking at welding. Well, what in this world doesn't have welding affiliated with?
Speaker 3:it, then it just started to open up this massive opportunity base, but I was looking at divers going cold, dark, lonely. That's probably not me.
Speaker 1:But what? What can I pull out of this? That is me right.
Speaker 3:Well, I became. I'm a freight train. Hopefully can't hear that I became great. I became friends with one of the faculty there actually, and he introduced me to one of his sons and his son actually struck an arc, got me to strike my first arc surface, obviously a surface welding, and I Was, you know, like a moth to the flame. More, more, more. I want to see more. I was kind of Oblivious to it, all, slightly questioned because this guy was welding barefoot.
Speaker 1:If wherever hang on, I mean I. You've seen me in my swim trunks, but I have some crazy burns on my foot from welding with sandals on, like. If anyone ever asks about PP, I got some pretty good examples of exactly what not to do.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean this guy, he was a kid right, he was like 18 years old and live in his life and he was great. Though, like this guy had welding tickets and is working for His dad's company and would go out and do welding jobs, and like I kind of fell in love with it because this was a young kid who was pretty much free, had a truck, went and did a job. Like I went and wrote about with him a few times on some Just quick jobs that he did, like this isn't really cool. I really enjoyed that and as far as I know, he's off making like Set design and real cool stuff. Now I mean, we've lost touch over the years. But Ben Boreen he struck my first arc with me and I am grateful that he shared and showed me.
Speaker 1:It's like your first kiss You'll never forget, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was amazing and it's interesting because they are such a welding family, because years later I actually like I mean I had met his brother, I hung out with them anyway, but his brother came to the welding technology programs at Conestoga and I I got to reconnect there with him. So that was kind of a needful circle Experience. All right, well right now.
Speaker 1:We got to take our break for our advertisers because normally, usually the warm-up talk takes about 20 to 30 Minutes. We're almost at an hour, so everyone who's watching this episode stay in for the long haul. This is gonna be a long one, but it's fantastic. I love this conversation, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back here on the CWB association podcast with Jackie Morris. All right, so stay tuned.
Speaker 5:The CWB association is new and improved and focused on you. We offer a free membership with lots of benefits to anyone interested in joining an association that is passionate about welding. We are committed to educating, informing and connecting our workforce. Gain access to your free digital publication of the weld magazine, free online training conferences and lots of giveaways. Reach out to your local CWB association chapter today to connect with other welding professionals and share welding as a trade in your community. Build your career, stay informed and support the Canadian welding industry. Join today and learn more at CWB Association org and we are back here at the CWB Association.
Speaker 1:My name is max and I'm here with Jackie. We had been talking up to this point about life. You know all these crazy things called life and now you got bitten by the welding moth. The welding moth has injected its poison into you and you are now recontemplating your career paths. You're at Seneca College in mid mid program. What's happening in your brain? What's gonna happen?
Speaker 3:So Interesting. I I fell in love with welding, but I'd also fallen in love with their recreational programming that they had there and I had decided that, you know what, maybe I'm going to Get into their rec program. So I did, I signed up, I went in and Unfortunately or fortunately, I mean, the universe works in its mysterious ways during this time I had actually started to have some interesting like health concerns come up and I thought it was stress-related and not taking care of myself, because it happened during like the week of exams are leading up to exams, or I'd have the worst, like abdominal pain, and I just thought it was a combination of, you know, drinking energy drinks and gummy candies and like not taking care of myself, probably part of it, but yes, you staying up all night long doing all the assignments, because I mean that's what I had to do.
Speaker 3:I had to balance my my life as a mom, life as a student, and I really wanted to excel and do well. So that was what it was like Well, not a lot to sleep anyway. So I got into this program and Leading into this program, I had gotten a fever that lasted for like a month.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's not I kept on.
Speaker 3:No, no, no. And I had talked to. You know, though, I was in the hospital a few times, talked to the doctors, what's going on? You know I'm no doctor here, guys, but a fever means an infection. Can you find it, that kind of stuff? And I got the Well, just monitor and take Tylenol. I'm like, guys, I've been doing this for four weeks now. Let's, let's have some a lookie-loo.
Speaker 3:Anyway, it turned into I was in such pain one day my mom had to take me to the hospital and I was like curled up in the fetal position, shivering, because I had these high fever, and the only thing that it could make me feel good was I'm singing all the baby songs I sing to my daughter to sleep and try to get through this. And it's kind of kismet, because sitting in my classes before this occurred, I was just thinking why am I in this program? It isn't for me. What they're asking of me is not Like it's something that I don't feel like I need to spend the next two years pursuing, and it was already past that point of getting your money back and all that. So it was kind of kismet that I was. I ended up staying in the hospital for a couple weeks because I ended up having a. Well, I had a six inch, six inch diameter Abscess in my abdomen.
Speaker 3:Because I had a hole, hole in my intestine. So it was good, yeah, I was able to medically, with ours, be able to withdraw, get all my money back. And then I started down this journey of this illness that I was needing to deal with, which was its own journey in itself, because nobody really could tell me conclusive what was wrong with me, and it took almost a year for them to say like, yes, we believe that you have Crohn's disease, we believe that you have a hole in your or a microscopic hole in your intestine. I had a hole in my side leaking all kinds of nasty, because where they had drained the abscess it never healed because it just continuously got, you know, fed so I kept getting fed, so I kept on leaking and it was disgusting experience, but it was eye opener on that.
Speaker 3:Doctors are just like everyone else. You've got 90% doctors and you got 55% doctors. So I kind of learned how to Stand up for myself a little bit, because I always felt that I wasn't that sick, even though I was really sick To the point where, finally, a lot of stuff happened. We can glaze over that, but a lot of stuff happened. A lot of Waiting happened, a lot of waiting to start a drug that would reduce your immune system so your body can heal itself. I'm like that sounds lovely, but that is not what ended up happening. I met a beautiful female doctor who listened to me, who saw me more than more.
Speaker 1:Minimum.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like the doctor I had originally had, I hadn't seen him More than a handful of times because we were waiting or whatever, and I this wasn't a great Life at this time. What I did with school was I I actually took some part-time classes at Seneca still, but this is when I had started taking night classes as a welder or in the, the SMAW Shop, so that I could start learning more about welding and it turned into being almost like a Therapy, almost a physical therapy for me, because when I dropped the hood, the pain that I was in wasn't there. I mean, it was, but I didn't pay attention to it. It just kind of gave me that relief.
Speaker 1:That focus point outside of where you were, you know yeah, that distraction.
Speaker 3:So I really fell in love with with it and I spent that whole year that I was really ill trying to figure out what this illness was taking. As many of these night, night time welding classes Got some certifications started to be like, yeah, this is much more my speed, you know. Of course I fell in love with a commercial diver and thought about maybe moving across the country. I did a lot of research about about, you know, moving and what kind of education systems are out in British Columbia, because that's where he was working and all this stuff, because I wasn't gonna leave my kid, that kind of stuff. And but then I also researched Programming that was close to home as well. I didn't just say like, well, that's where I'm going I wanted exactly.
Speaker 3:I wanted to kind of make a See, see what was available, and from that I talked to Jim Galloway for five minutes on the phone at Conestoga College and yeah, I had been welding for a year and a half at this point, had got some tickets and Was trying to figure out how to break in talk to this man and I felt like I knew nothing about welding and said wow, well, I absolutely need to know more and I need to take this guy's program because I was sold, just for talking to him for five minutes and I didn't realize how much of a Opportunity or how big the welding world was really until I went to Conestoga.
Speaker 3:But so I got better. I had surgery, did all that stuff. I, you know, learned how to handle that side of things and I applied to the welding engineering, manufacturing Technology, welding robotics program, something like that. It's a long name when the Whamper yeah, yeah, yeah, the the wet or the wham, yeah, exactly, and I Started to go to school.
Speaker 1:So that's a full-time two-year program, the wet like the technology program at Conestoga right.
Speaker 3:It was a full-time, three-year program when I signed up for. When I signed up, there wasn't a lot of different options, like today there's much more robotics or inspection.
Speaker 1:There's all these different areas, yeah exactly there's techniques.
Speaker 3:So it was kind of like the not the beginning, because this program has been at Conestoga College for many, many years before I was born. So I had to sign up because it was the only one that sounded Like it would give me that in-depth information that I was looking for to help me launch a career in the welding industry, and so I I applied. I did like night classes to up my math and make sure that I had all the prerequisites to get in and Well that well, that's something that I actually did when I was pregnant with my daughter, because I was. I knew that I had to Update some things and just keep myself busy. So it was good that I did all that updating previously, because it helped me then get into the Seneca program, which then helped me also get into the Conestoga program, and I've pretty much been there ever since yeah, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:You know you get through the, the technologist program at Conestoga which is, it's fairly renowned. Conestoga's got a wide reach there. I mean we teach Conestoga programs in Saskatchewan. We have a joint program with Sass Pauly and Conestoga. We Conestoga is also involved with JulliVol trades. Conestoga is also involved with like some R&D projects that we supported CWB, you know, with the more, with mobility programs and there's it's just a huge Hub of welding stuff out of Conestoga which has grown fairly organically for like 30 years now.
Speaker 1:You could pin a lot of this on Jim Galvin, because if you don't know Jim, google him people. You know, if you're listening to this in the US and and you know and you want to know who is someone who really has a good game changer here in Canada, look up Jim Galloway. We have a lot of his sessions online through our website. But he's he's a wonderful person. He has an ability to talk to any level. He can talk as technical as you want any PhD will he can stand up to. But then he's also so great at just talking to To students and people that are even just getting into welding as a starter. You know you said five minutes and he adds in so now you take the program. What was the program like? Did you find it challenging? Did you find it difficult, or or was it just like hook, line and sinker? You're in.
Speaker 3:So interesting. You say that I was living in Aurora at that time and Conestoga is about an hour and a half away from and it was in the Guelph campus when I was, when I started. So that's like a hundred and hundred and ten hundred and twenty kilometers from my house. So that was an interesting thing because I wasn't moving my child at this time, so I commuted. I Got a job on site, same as I did at Seneca. Well, if there's gonna be gaps, I better fill them with important things. If I wasn't studying or working, I was napping or driving.
Speaker 3:So that was, that was interesting because I was trying to keep up with some of the guys that were, you know, 18 years old, fresh out of high school. Their parents were giving them the full ride. I had to go through OSAP and you know, take all the time I had to go through OSAP and you know, take all the loans and things like that. Yes, I had some support from my family but, like I said, it's not like they gave me a handed everything to me. I'm a huge support was watching my child or dropping her off at care, making sure she was taking care of that stuff. Absolutely, it's huge.
Speaker 3:And I Did find it easy because I was so far away that I could just spend all the hours I needed in a lab Like a computer lab or in a. They didn't really have a library at the golf campus. That was all I'd do, but I could get cozy in a corner and get the work done right. So that was beneficial to me. But I can tell you, when I was in my second year, coming off of January start, I was feeling the burnout.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I was feeling tired, I was feeling burnt out and I was like in my mind I'm like, oh, what is the excuse I can use to get to postpone and and Take a year off? Or I had in hindsight, like now, looking at what they have, I wish they had the co-op programming, because that would have been exactly what I needed.
Speaker 3:Yes, what ended up happening was I ended up being blessed with my second daughter and I'm like well, universe, that's not exactly what I was expecting, but okay. So at this point I was in my second year, I was just finishing up, I was pregnant with my second daughter. I had to make a decision, or I had, I just finished second year and then I found out I was pregnant. I ended up Trying for a couple different jobs in the summer and then I just started putting feelers out, or Mm-hmm, for what I could do through the summer.
Speaker 3:I ended up working for the college because I was working as A part-time student, or work, work, study student is what they call it. So of course, they wanted to keep me on because I had been a great asset to them leading up. And at this time it was an amazing opportunity because we were actually moving from the Guelph campus to the brand new site at the fountain street location, which is now their technology engineering and technology building, which was an amazing endeavor in itself. And I had just said to my boss hey, this is what's happening. I'm not coming back to school right away, I'm going to be Breaking having another baby.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm gonna be having another baby and I'm not gonna. I do not want to step in and not be able to do this well, because I really wanted to do it well. So I said do you have a job, do you have more work for me to do? And they said, yes, we do. You're the only person that knows where anything is anyway, because I was the when we moved. I was the only person on site from start to finish of the move in, because you know, full-time techs had Vacation and you know, Turnin out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was there the whole time and did take care of a lot of things until one full-time tech stayed in Guelph and cleaned up there and one came over to to To Cambridge and was helping unload there and kind of like my. My claim to fame, I guess, is that when we were packing up one of the guys was close to retire mains and what had. Enough of the bureaucracy is probably the nicest way to put it.
Speaker 3:And for people who don't know, college has got a lot of bureaucracy yes, and so you know I won't say who he is, but like, and I quote one Trailer, so we've packed 53 foot or 350 four foot trailers. This is what we did. We packed in Guelph and then we would tell the trailers to go away and then we would call them back to unload them at the other side. As we're closing the first trailer, I said, okay, who's keeping track of what's on what trailer? And I quote I don't give a f***, this is what the full-time guy says. And I'm like, oh, okay, someone should.
Speaker 3:Well, I yeah yeah, I'm like, well, I won't be the person who doesn't know. So I took out my cell phone and then documented what was on each truck and just kind of kept that in my pocket because I didn't want to be, like you know, caught with my pants down like who wants to be, in one of those situations where you're like I don't know, it's not my responsibility. Even though it wasn't my responsibility, I wasn't about to look like a fool, yeah, so Instead, you could be the hero.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but in the long run, what ended?
Speaker 3:up happening was like, yeah, I did have a great transition and I know I got a lot of respect from people like Jim because I work with Jim the whole Time. Jim was one of the faculty that was there all the time and a huge in on the design and development and all that stuff, so it was a an honor to work with him on that project. But in it does create animosity because later than that person was upset that they would come to me like upper management would come to me and ask me questions instead of them and I'm like, oh man Well they did it themselves, yeah exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:I mean I don't feel bad about it, I don't I don't dislike this man. He was an amazing guy and I learned a lot from him and and I'm very trouble to be able to work with people that have that experience but yeah, like that kind of broke me in on Into the job that I have now. So much so that I I got Requested by one of the faculty that does not want, does no longer work at the college, but he requested to have me as his technologist in his second-year programming. So I literally just finished second-year programming in the next year than I was the tech helping in his lab classes, which was also a great honor. That.
Speaker 3:I could then translate that stuff that I just finished myself.
Speaker 1:So how much of a break did you end up taking from your finishing your course? You know, because you you had a baby, so there's at least a year there. I mean depends how far you want to push it in either direction. You know how. What was the break? Was it a couple years before you could go back into your third year?
Speaker 3:So what I ended up doing was so I worked until her due date and, you know, wanted to make as much money as I could and stay as long as I could. She was born in February, and then I Came back to work as a evening instructor in like part-time or continuing education in September of that year.
Speaker 3:So I'd only taken like eight five six months, yeah, off, yeah, of working and then I was fine because I did like one night a week and that was kind of keep my toe in the door. And then, because they had just expanded, they asked me back as the technologist at the Guelph campus when I came back in. So I came back a month early, so 11 months I was off of work and I stayed as their welding technologist out of the Guelph campus. I am still there now. I Didn't start taking my third year at this point, until 2017. So this was all. In 2011 I finished my pro, or I finished the two years Right.
Speaker 1:2012 I had my daughter good four, five year break there. I.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like almost seven, I think, because I think it was 2017 when I started to go back and they do have rules on how long has it been since you last were in to be able to transfer credits? And at that point, I had graduated out, because they did have a two-year technician program. So, technically, I have two pieces of paper, if that matters. I have one that says welding technician and one that says welding technologist from Conestoga College. Because of the way that their programming was originally Nice, yeah, and I came back part-time in 2017 and started chipping away at the third year because at that time, let's say, the bureaucracy was real and I wasn't told I wouldn't have a job, but they do like you to have certain pieces of paper. So, because the two-year pieces of paper wasn't enough, so I went back or I basically said, listen, you're either going to let me go and I'm going back full-time and getting it, but I may not ever come back, or I'll go back part-time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, work with me exactly. And they chose to work with me and kind of worked out great, because that year, in 2017, the full-time faculty that worked out of the Guelph campus, who supported all of the motive power welding programming because there was still welding at the Guelph campus, he was asked to launch the Brantford campus welding programming. So actually they originally asked me and I just said I just moved here Like I just bought a house in 2016.
Speaker 3:I'm like I just moved here to reduce my hour and a half commute and I said, why don't you get the full-time guy who lives 20 minutes from that campus to do that and have me stay here, because who's going to run his programming? I'm like, well, I can run his programming. I've been running it with him for years now. So I became the. I covered the full-time faculty's workload plus my 24-hour a week of a technologist workload to maintain the shop order, deal with damaged equipment or all of that stuff, whatever a shop needs to run. And I was going to school part-time to be able to juggle all that plus tech for Roger down in Brantford, because I would do all the things like that remotely. Yes, at that point, two kids, yeah. So, yeah, that's where that started.
Speaker 1:So lazy you're not what's that so lazy, you are not.
Speaker 3:I got lots of tabs open all the way, I don't know if it's lazy.
Speaker 1:No, like I mean, that's the amount of effort. Like I mean, people listening to the story are going to be like geez, you must have like 8D size batteries in you at all times to just keep moving. Like it's a lot. It's a lot on the plate, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I've definitely been gifted with a very optimistic attitude. I don't know what it's like Like. I do know what depression is. I do know what it does to people. I have struggled with my own darkness too, but I do believe that I have something in me that some people who do suffer from serious depression don't necessarily have, or are missing sometimes because I'm constantly like, well, I won't be in this hole forever, there's something better over there. And I'm doing this and like I don't know, it's just perspective, right. So I constantly am thinking like there's something good's coming out of it. And I was enjoying it, like I love doing it all. We were so busy before COVID happened. It was nonstop. People would look at our calendar and be like, how do you do this? I'm like just it fits in. If it fits in, we can get it done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if it fits, it sticks yeah.
Speaker 3:And I mean I had been my whole adult life running weird hours and not having that like eight to 10 hours sleep. I didn't do that, that midnight oil baby.
Speaker 1:That's what you run on right. I had a four to six rule. If I can get four, I could operate. Six is getting up to prime time, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:There was a time when I used to take two four hour naps in the day, one like early morning, like real early morning, and then one like mid afternoon, and that actually was a really great way to function. You could party all night, you could work all day. Work all day. Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So now you finished that technologist program, so now that it's your, your three in and you've been putting in all the part times at the at the college. So like there's a couple angles that I see forming here. One is you could try to get that full time college gig, which is tough to get. I'll. You know, there's a lot of ownership when it comes to the full time college gigs. It's hard to get in there. I did part time for almost seven years before I got my full time gig and then I quit the next year. So it's, but I at least say I got the full time, I got it. I'm sorry I got a bounce now, but you know, or you decide to take that technologist, those two pieces of paper and balance, go work for private industry or go go. You know, do your own thing. You know what, what, what was your path that you chose or or are choosing, because it might be evolving at any time.
Speaker 3:It might change, that's right and it will change in the future. So, through going to school part time, halfway through the part time of third year, I I had gotten married, I had gotten pregnant again with my third child was really excited to kind of do both of them together. I got my level, or I finished my level three, when my baby was under one years old, which was fantastic, to just kind of push it out. It was a little strange, cause COVID did happen at that time, like COVID started right when we were going to graduate. So the tech projects and things at the end kind of got a little muddled. But we got, I got through and and then I said, okay, now what? Well, at this point I had been on mat leave for nine months. Covid happened. I had opted to do an 18 month mat leave so that I could do nine months of school, finish it up and then enjoy another nine months of being with my child. That's what the plan was. Right.
Speaker 3:November 2020 came around and I'm sitting here like physically making myself hurt because I was just so anxious about well, how am I going to do this? I have a kid in elementary school, a kid in high school, a husband that goes to a factory of 2,500 people and I work at a college. That's a lot of people Movie parts yeah.
Speaker 3:And yes, when we're talking like you have to get your brain swabbed every time you have a sneeze or something like that, and I refused to do that to my children. I'm like, no, we will not be doing these unnecessary tests, we'll just stay home for 10 days or whatever the restrictions were, because I didn't need the the fear of the healthcare system, because my kids already were scared of needles and things like that. Who wasn't scared of a shot, you know? So we had made the decision that I was going to walk away from my job and my husband was going to support us, and then whatever happened would happen, because life was so. We didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 3:Covid was so uncertain for everyone, so I had called my boss and talked to her about it and, because I was contract, I just assumed I was quitting. And then she goes well, you need to talk to HR. So I talked to HR and then, lo and behold, I find out that I actually didn't need to quit, that there was a specific Human industry or time off, sabbatical thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was some sort of COVID COVID relief or whatever. So I could be off work, which was great. What it means is it retained my job. I mean, it was unpaid I'm contract anyway, which is fine, but I got to retain my position, so they just called me every few months to see when I was ready to come back. Ultimately, I ended up going back in March 2022, kind of when masks were coming off which was good for me because I just wanted to get back to the way it was, not to really experience the way that things ran through COVID, and so that was great. I got to spend time with my family, which was good and not so good, because I know I'm not meant to be Nobody's meant to be with their kids 24 seven.
Speaker 3:You're meant to have programming. You're meant to go out and do stuff.
Speaker 1:You're you know whenever I hear about parents that are with their kids 24, seven or even try to shame me for you know the lack of involvement I had with my kids, I think less of them than they probably think of me as like okay dude, like where's your personality, where's your life, where's what? I guess this is where I get help and this is, I think you know, what I've been trying to do with my kids, that it's the long game. I may not have been there all the time, but they saw me working for a purpose and achieving that purpose and getting there, and they saw the sacrifice and hopefully that's the motivation that they have to be like. That's how you do it Bus, work hard, pay attention, be nice. You know, don't be a cool All these things that you got to do to hopefully be an ethical leader in their worlds. Right when I, when I hear quality.
Speaker 3:You probably had great quality time with your kids when you had it. Not just mundane blah, get off me, don't touch me, I don't want you near me. Because that's what kids that are, with their parents here all the time Like I need a, I need space. Then a child might think that they need space from them and it's like really no, they just need time for themselves. It has nothing to do with the child, but how does that affect the child's brain and what they're thinking Like?
Speaker 1:well, my mom doesn't love me or something Like who knows what it is, but Well there's the other side of it too, like I wasn't just out sleeping or like napping somewhere, I was working. So when I would come back it was like we're going to Cuba for two weeks as a family or we're going to. We went to Mexico for six weeks once, like because it's like, yeah, like I mean I'm not around, but I mean there's a reason, it's not for no reason. So you know, mike, every now and then my kids would be like in teenage years they'd be like why, you know, we don't get to do anything. It's like you guys got more tickets in your passport than I bet your entire school combined. Like check yourself, check your privilege. Kids Like.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Now for yourself, you know. Are you a full-time instructor now at Conestoga? Are you on contract now? What's the situation you're in right now with your career?
Speaker 3:So I love my job in that I absolutely.
Speaker 1:I love how you say that so slow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I love what I do with the students. I love being a technical translator, because that's what I feel that I am when I'm in front of a class or with a one-on-one situation with a student in a booth. It's really rewarding that you can see the aha moment or that light bulb go off sometimes and being able to allow the equipment to help teach with me, because that's another thing. I can get somebody to set up in a certain way and then, like SMAW, it can do it for you as long as you help hold it in the right position. You know, I'm not saying that there isn't skill to be required there. I'm talking about just striking an arc and putting a pass down.
Speaker 3:But I do love that and I love that when I start feeling a little down on myself, on. You know, is this what I'm going to do forever? I'm not really sure. Or where am I supposed to be? Somebody will say something to me like hey, I'm really glad that you were in front of this class because I thought I was going to leave, but then, after it was you, I stayed and it's been fantastic. Or I learned more in five minutes talking with you than I have all week with that guy, or whatever.
Speaker 1:Students can really make you feel good about yourself.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It makes you feel like you know you're out there right. You're where you're supposed to be. The bureaucracy is real. I came from landscaping and manual property maintenance and stuff like that before All this welding stuff came into my life, so that was my practical experience. I did have some tickets, but I've only like a hair of site welding, so I don't have a lot of experience. What somebody would say would be like you know in industry.
Speaker 3:When nobody considers my work in moving a campus or packing up a whole bunch of robots or setting up oh God, I don't even know how many over a hundred welding systems within one place, plus oxy fuel systems, plus so many different experiences I got to experience within the college themselves.
Speaker 3:I also have done. I got to work on a really cool research project as an affiliate for Conestoga College. I was a research person working down out of Liberty Engineering and we did some cool copper cladding to steal for the nuclear waste management operation through OPG. But all of those things that actually make me you know, or my credential, or what I've done in the past, according to the bureaucracy of the system, isn't the experience they necessarily want or are looking for for their credential, for their staff. Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 1:It does, because I had a fight with bureaucracy that I won when I was at SAS Poly, but it was. It's not the best of times to be putting to fight those fights and it might be necessary, but it's not fun, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, and I even found myself in a position where I might not have been being paid on the same pay scale as my male counterpart. And all kinds of other things that I, I mean, I did try to, or I walked the union path, because that's what you do when you're a union worker, or whatever, but then I just kind of felt like I didn't understand what I was actually paying for within the Mm-hmm, mm-hmm Anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an episode in itself. I had the same thing happen with me, so yeah, and I.
Speaker 3:So I and I decided that is it a fight worth fighting in in some aspects? And then I just decided that you know what, I do not want to fight the machine, because that's what it is. It's the machine that has all their policies and procedures and, and I'm sitting here, going like you know what, I'm happy to live within the function of the machine because I am function, I am not necessary, I'm not there, they're.
Speaker 1:You're not a gear. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but I sure as heck fight a lot of fires and keep a standard that really does pump out a good quality product and the product is people. That's just the difference and I truly believe that I do a great job at what I do and I I'm happy to be within that function. And it's good being a part-time contractor within the this type of facility, because if you work within the union as a full-time support staff, or faculty for that matter, there are restrictions. Yes there is.
Speaker 3:So a full-time faculty can't teach a continuing education spot, that's right.
Speaker 1:Unless there's nobody else right Like yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like some sort of special, but like then the union would get on them if they For contact hours didn't find somebody or whatever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and as a support staff, you can only take on three faculty hours as a support staff if you're full-time, where I find it quite beneficial that I myself am like a two-person team where I am right now myself and the full-time faculty where if my full-time faculty is off for whatever reason, I can pick up his whole workload and cover. So it really does make an easy switch and dynamic that way, and it's also great on my wallet too, because I can work as a yeah, I made more money time faculty for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I made more money teaching as part-time than I did as full-time.
Speaker 3:I'd say my buddy and I would always have this saying though part-time is full-time, and full-time is part-time because you worked more hours as a part-time or making more money, but the full-timer's made good money but worked a lot less hours yeah so I do like the grayness that I have, and like also, today, me having this conversation with you in the middle of the day.
Speaker 3:With the part-time work that I do, I'm capable of doing this and taking the time out to do that, or if my kids need me for whatever reason. Only when I'm affiliated with a class am I really like stuck to that schedule.
Speaker 3:Everything else is like I can call Distributors whenever I want. Sometimes I have conversations with our supplier in the middle of the night Well, maybe not the middle of the night, but the late evening because that's when they take care of their quoting and stuff like that, because they work really Long hours too. So it's very flexible for me. With having three kids and I've I've noticed now that my girls are much older, like my I have almost a 20 year old, a 12 year old and an almost 5 year old. The, the little ones are easy. They they just want some time with you, they want to have fun with you. But the big ones really need your time to listen and Just talk with them and just be around. Yeah, so it's really given me that Ability to be here for my family. Yeah, so I'm really grateful that that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3:However, I did like I said before. I felt like I was kind of losing myself because I was off for basically three years from work because I had a baby. And then COVID happened and this is actually where the association came in a little bit for me, because I was part of the association when I was a student, but then it kind of fell to the wayside because I Didn't really know back then, like this is we're talking like 2011 kind of time. I didn't really know what the association was doing for me and it cost money. So I was like, well, I don't have that money To 80 bucks like a lot.
Speaker 3:This was way back when right, and so I kind of fell, fell by the wayside. Not to mention I was very busy doing all the things but when I wasn't so busy at home kind of feeling lost from my career I Started to attend the Conestoga College Association, cwb Association, chapters events because they did like trivia nights and Some of these fun things, because they were really good at adapting to online based stuff, because it was cold, yeah, and I could attend from home with a baby here, without a wherever it doesn't matter, I could be there. And that really started to connect me back into the into the welding world, started to make me feel better about Not being alone, because I felt like it's a loan.
Speaker 3:Then I started to attend the Kitchener chapter meetings because I had I was in school for a while. But then I just said to them I'm like guys, I might as well just start with the kitchener chapter, because I'm not gonna be staying a student for very long. And Then the chapter stuff is kind of history. I've just been there trying to work with the guys and They've been doing it for a long time and and I think we're all waiting for some fresh meat because we got a lot of talent. But we we need we need that young, fiery passion, that people. You know what are you talking about.
Speaker 1:You're that young, fiery, but you what? Are you 39? You're still a baby almost yeah.
Speaker 3:So, yes, that that was kind of how I'm gonna, or how I started to think in my mind where my career could start going because, like I mean, in a past life I must have been a foot philatress max because I Like doing a lot of for free. And now I'm thinking, who's the idiot? Because I do a lot of volunteer work, my resume has more volunteer than anything else on it. Hey, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:I swear that a lot of my opportunities I have in my life is because I've been a volunteer since I was a kid. I've I've never not been a part of some volunteer organization.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I don't, I don't regret a single minute of it. I like volunteering my time, I like doing things to help growing our communities. I like to, to, to be, to be that kind of person. I mean, obviously, making money as a necessity because I got to pay my bills, but, um, I'm slowly trying to figure out how to balance all of that and start thinking outside of the box, because for a long time I would sit down and think, okay, well, what's next? What piece of paper do I need to get Next? Because I need another piece of paper, or I need industry experience or quote on quote industry experience because what I do is very valid. And experience, and I have to constantly tell myself that, because People will say things like oh, why don't you get a real job? And I'm like I do have a real job, why don't you change your attitude?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to get a real mouth, yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly, um, but so make more. Make, make something more definitive, because what am I? I'm a whole bunch of things, and that's one thing that a lot of people how do they define themselves? You know, are you a welding technologist? Are you a mom? Are you a Chapter chair? Well, I'm all of those things. So, so why do I have to be just one and why do I have to define myself by my career?
Speaker 1:By what standard or to who? Right like I mean if someone if someone's asking, it's more about why are you asking, then why should I answer Right?
Speaker 3:exactly, or what answer do you want?
Speaker 1:Where are we?
Speaker 3:What convention are we at which has or prevents my wearing today? Right yeah.
Speaker 1:So talk to me about your chapter. You know like now you're your chapter chair for Kitchener, you're. This is a role you took over last year I'm not quite, I think not quite a year ago now not even just October.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're since October years. What's that experience like for you? Has it been Too much, too little, overwhelming worthwhile? You know because, like most chapter chairs across Canada, including myself, what years ago I was all-in-told into this position and was like, okay, what's going on? And sometimes things I've just been running for a while and then you're not really sure how they were running and now it's up to you to keep them running right.
Speaker 3:That's kind of how I feel. I actually apologize to our former chair, because you know you send email sometimes and all of a sudden it's like crickets, and then you send another email. I'm like oh, everyone's like oh, hey, sorry, I meant to give you an answer.
Speaker 3:And I'm like okay, well, I don't have time for this like I need you to either answer me the first time, or I'm making the decision right, like that's how I were Um and and we do have a lot of talent in our chapter who have lots of industry experience, who work in industry, who work at the college, who Um, are very influential and they are great resources to have within our chapter because we can do things like you know, get sponsorships for giveaways, have great technical talks like coming up this week we have one from Jim Galloway.
Speaker 3:He's going to do a great technical talk for us. That stuff is great. But then having the people in the background to do all the organizational stuff that is where I'm trying to To get a little bit more fresh blood on our, on our membership or on our exec panel To help with that side of things because, like I said, I got lots of talent, but they they have lots of things going on in their lives too, so I need some people who want to do that organizational thing. So I'm working on that actually. Uh, my friend that I was talking to you about before we started today, who just moved back from british columbia- Um, it was very keen.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's very keen. Uh, she actually came to an international women's day event with me Last week that skills ontario had put on. Um, it was kind of launching myself as a brand because I'm also doing some side stuff there, but it was also to bring out that I'm not just one. I don't just have one pair of boots. I had all the kitchener chapter gear out.
Speaker 3:I talked with a whole bunch of people about kitchener chapter handing out all the swag. You know they, they look at me and they're like, are you an artist? And I'm like, well, some days, yeah, exactly right, because Because I always love doing the metal art stuff. Who, who doesn't love to put together something cute for their, their friend or their mom or their, whatever their significant other? Um, and I also, uh, a few years ago put in some art pieces to the international institute of welding Uh, for their digital art collection. So that was also something I wanted to showcase. They, you do not have to be one thing, you don't have to be just a welding technologist. You can be an artist, a welding technologist, a chapter chair, a mom, a friend, all those things, um and uh. And it's okay because, even though it's confusing and it feels a little. I feel a little lost some days because just disjointed, maybe yeah or just broad.
Speaker 3:I just feel so broad. It's like you know, yeah, that's uh, it's hard to define, you know, because I'm proud of everything that I've done. I was a teen parent and look what I. Look where I am now, like I, yes, I've had lots of support, but that's only from all the hard work?
Speaker 1:that I don't know. One gets no. One climbs alone.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. So, so, uh, I really like that I can combine these things, and it's not just you have to get one into one career path and then stay there forever, because I was one thing that I was afraid of, too when I was younger to be like stuck in a cubicle for the rest of my life. I didn't want that, and I don't think I'm even close to that like.
Speaker 3:I get time to write procedures and I get time to write so peas, but I also get time to technically translate or share my passion for metal art, or you know working. Yeah, exactly all of the things.
Speaker 1:So now we're getting close to the end of the of the interview here. You know we've covered off a lot of the great points, but you know what what's. What's a future state for Jackie, because you've had such a diverse path, you know of different experiences to get you to where you are now and I don't feel like it's anywhere close to done like. I mean, I feel like this is always an evolving thing which I think is exciting and daunting and exhausting and invigorating, like all these things. Where do you see yourself? You know you're coming up on 39. You know, let's say, 10 years out. You know D. Are you gunning for that full time Caught, a stoga gig someday? Um, are you looking to maybe branch out? You said you're looking to build yourself a brand. That means you got a side hustle going on. You know so and I'm all about the side hustle. You know me and my side hustles, so you know what. What's, what are you envisioning? What's the next steps looking like?
Speaker 3:um. So my Vision right now is combining all of these things. I love to work together Because I have multiple communities that I absolutely adore spending time with them, working with our hands, educating people, and I want to bring them together because I feel so spread thin because of that. I want to try to sit, because there's so many different things that are connected. I mean, we on our previous meeting we had I am a disc golfer as well.
Speaker 3:Well, disc golf baskets are metal. Maybe we'll do some workshops on make a disc golf basket. Well, you know that's something Education slash community come together. You know, we do have a plan to be doing a fundraiser to help Make the community more inclusive with the canadian welding bureau association, kitchener chapter um, with, also in conjunction with golf disc golf club and the Queer disc golf, to basically bring together different communities through a disc golf event.
Speaker 3:However, the goal is to hopefully Create some pathways for people to that are in the 2s, lgbtq plus kind of Area to come into the welding world and maybe learn that there's a place for them too, because there is so much versatility Within welding and that you know you don't have to wear the same hat every day, but there is something for you to contribute. So I'm very excited to try to blend all of that stuff together, because I've been felt, I have felt so segregated myself for so long. I'm done with the segregation. I want to start building community. Um, I mean, I've seen, I've seen a lot of organizations try to build and fight that segregation, but they're also segregating. They're fighting segregation with segregation, which I think is kind of counterintuitive.
Speaker 1:So it is an interesting uh juxtaposition. It is and I know exactly what you're talking about like even just now you're talking about. You know, the queer community, which I love deeply.
Speaker 1:I've been very involved with my queer community here in Regina and and I try to support as much as I can and it's like you know, I want the queer community to be as comfortable as in any other human being in the welding fields, and it's always like People start thinking immediately of like, well, they could do that job or they could do that. What are you talking about? They can, they can do whatever they want. They can do whatever they want, like exactly why are we trying to create baskets out of baskets? You know what I mean. Like I was like you're telling me to take apart this basket to build a new basket. You know, like what, what, what? Let's back up.
Speaker 1:And why can't you know the most? You know eccentric, flamboyant queer person in the world, like, pick the most one the Liberace of queers. Why can't they Just work in a manufacturing shop and build widgets? Absolutely, absolutely. Why do we need to be like, well, what's the job that would suit you? Any job, bro, any job. Like what are you talking like? You know what I mean. It is frustrating.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, which job interests you the most? And that's one thing that I say to a lot of people. I'm like look, it's about your journey. If you love it, you're gonna love it and you will be better at it. I want I want a doctor who loves their job. I don't want one who hates it. I want a welder who loves their job, because they're ultimately gonna do a better job at their job, and that goes for everything.
Speaker 3:And if you don't like it, like I said, your toolbox has got wheels move on, do something different and know that it's okay to have a million tabs open and that you have a lot of versatility. And that's the best thing about the welding industry is that there is so much versatility. You don't have to be A welder on the floor. You could be an engineer who's designing, you could be a salesperson, you could be an inspector, you could be a podcast director or Personality like you can be so many different things, and there is a lot of joy in knowing that. I am, and nobody else has to be stuck in one path. Live your life to, to what Makes you happy, because it's your life. You only have one of it. You know, everybody only has one life. Why are we gonna get into that cyclical? Get up in the morning, drag yourself to work, go to work, come home, shower, eat.
Speaker 1:We gotta say, unless we need to, with you makers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, but at the same time, what are they doing on their vacation? Or maybe they go and they work hard for a couple weeks and then they go they have a happy time.
Speaker 3:Exactly like you. You know you build a life that you want to build and if you're unhappy, it's because you're sitting in it. You're choosing to stay in that position. I'm not saying that you know, there aren't times where I'm in a happy place, but there's any happy things going on around, absolutely that. That's life. But you know, don't, don't do something because somebody said that's what you should do or that's what you should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta feel it, you gotta vibe with it. Yeah, I've had more success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've brought it up on the show before like I mean, I've had the jobs where I'm pulling over on the side of the road on the way to work to cry and it's like I hate this job, but that's you know. Then the other side of me is like you need this job. It's a good job, it pays very well. People would. People out there would want this job that you are hating. And then eventually I was like why am I guilting myself into staying? They can have it, yep.
Speaker 3:Well, and like we said before, it doesn't mean you're like gonna walk out the door and just let go of your position. It means you're gonna take the time to go and head hunt your own new company. You are valuable, so you can choose what you want to go.
Speaker 1:What do I need? What skills am I missing to get out of here? What, what do I need? On my resume? And Even just that thought process when you're down to be like I, I hate where I am, even just to put on a piece of paper being like, okay, what do I need to get out of here? Oh, I need this ticket or I need this course and you start googling it on the internet. That's exciting. Immediately you start feeling better because you're like okay, these are things I can do. These are positive. You know forward motions.
Speaker 3:Or do things like become part of a club or a member of the cwb association, because when you're in that Swamp like I've been there and you're like, okay, how can I connect with people in the industry I want to connect with? There are clubs for every industry. I swear.
Speaker 3:And if you find that community and then even if you just become friends with a handful of those people, the opportunity that is there, it's like hey, well, you know we have a job opening at such and such. You should apply because you'd be great or whatever. So now it does come down to who you know. But also you would never have known that that was an option if you weren't friends with these people. Just shooting the, shooting the breeze over a beer or something like that right, so I always.
Speaker 1:I always found it interesting that people would be like it's not what you know, it's who you know and that would be derogatory. I'd be like actually, why is that derogatory? I mean, that sounds like a good deal, because I know way more people than things I know, like.
Speaker 3:Well, well, you need to actually. Well, it makes sense where, like yeah, it is who you know, but you also need to know, you also need to be in the know be able to back it up? Yeah exactly, yeah, you got to be able to back it up, because Otherwise you got nothing to stand on well the industry fiddles those out pretty quick.
Speaker 1:You know, like people, like you said, like people at Peking high school, it's like there's people that come in the welding or the trays and it's like, oh, this, watch out that, yeah, we'll see where you are in five years. You know like the industry will filter itself out pretty quick.
Speaker 3:Well and be be humble, but be respectful like I had a student once. He was an industrial mechanic and he I mean I, I always would come in and start teaching right off the bat. I have a real bad time to actually introduce myself. Most of the time I just start going and the guy thought or he came to me after class and said to me he's like hey, I thought I wasn't gonna learn anything today. And I was like, well, that's strange, you came to school and you thought you weren't gonna learn anything today. But I think he meant that he wasn't gonna learn anything from me for whatever reason.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, from whatever reason maybe it's a female thing, I don't know, it didn't matter, didn't bother me but he said I learned a lot today and I just wanted to let you know, and that was very humbling, I think, for him to be able to have the courage to come and say that to me. And it goes to show and this was many years ago, this was like maybe 10 years ago, because I've been with the college for Since 2011 so, yeah, so it was a long time ago, but I think that means the change is already happening that there are people within the industry who, as long as you show up and show what you know, they'll respect you. You know, no, no, you're know your and you'll be alright. And and also be honest, because if I don't know the answer, I'm not gonna bull them.
Speaker 3:You can't people? People smell that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, miles away, and it's a simple google to find out if you're lying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, just be honest. And and if you have the ability to say like, hey, you know what, I don't know the answer to that, but in my position I can say, but you're gonna find out and bring it back to me next week and we'll have a conversation, or vice versa, hey, you know what I don't know, I'm gonna go find out and then we'll have a chat, that is that's really important. I guess it comes down to integrity, right? Like, if you have integrity, um, and pride for what you do, you're not gonna try to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, you're gonna just be honest about and wools kind of see through, like I'll take a wool.
Speaker 1:Are we talking like?
Speaker 3:Especially with my computer in my pocket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right. Well, this wraps up the interview. I love this. We can go. We're almost at two hours. We've been just rocking and rolling here. Um, you know what would be. I guess, as a final point, you know what's, what's the advice you would give. You know you can cover any demographic that you want. We can talk single moms. You know the single moms out there. What what's to. You know what's the opportunities in welding, or for the people that are just lost in the structure, or as a woman, or you know there's so many things that jackie can represent that. What, what piece of advice would you give out there to the people listening?
Speaker 3:Just be your true, authentic self, be you, do what you want and, you know, mold your own path. Don't listen to people saying, like you know, if there's a hard way, that's the way you go, because that's what people told me. It wasn't the hard way, it was my way. Enjoy, enjoy life. You. The life's not, or tomorrow's not, uh, not um, given to anyone. Yeah, it's not guaranteed for anyone. Just enjoy what you're doing and and don't be afraid to get dirty and work hard and Listen. If somebody's got passion and they're, they're sharing passion. Listen, because you will learn so much from just listening to somebody else. Share what they have to share, and then you might find a spark and then you can find a direction that you would like to at least travel. And there's no reason why you can't do a U turn or Turn, left or right doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:No, there's no, no yeah, lots of.
Speaker 3:There's no direct line to the, to the final Destination. And what's the final destination anyways? Max death.
Speaker 1:No, I don't know what's the final destination. There's a very good saying in philosophy when the destination is unknown, any road will take you there.
Speaker 3:Exactly there you go, so that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks so much, jackie for being on. The show is fantastic. I'll be seeing you at the n a c in Toronto You're in a couple months and away so we'll be able to hang out and and if anybody's ever in the kitchen area or wants to become a part of the kitchener chapter, please do so. They do amazing work. All the all the GTA chapters are doing really well right now, so lots of opportunities there and really cool stuff. This will probably be released after your event, but check out their website. There's social media is on point. There's always lots of stuff coming up and cool events. So thanks, jackie, for for being here with me today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, max, it was a pleasure awesome and for all the people that have been following along with the podcast. Thank you so much for the, for being a part of this. Make sure you keep downloading, sharing and commenting on our podcast wherever you can, and always. I've always appreciate the, the, the what do you call them? The leads you sent me for finding new guests I chase them all down. And and for the people on instagram that I message I'm not just some creeper People send me to you and then I put in your chat being like hey, you want to be on my podcast and you're leaving me on read, answer me back, because I mean, if I'm reaching out to you, I like your story, I'd love to have you on the show. So I hope, I hope you become a part of it. So stay tuned for the next episode. We hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to the cwb association welding podcast with max serenity. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwb association dot org to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions of what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the cwb group, presented by max serenity, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.