The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 203 with Alexis Armstrong and Max Ceron
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world to share their passion and give you the right tips to stay on top of what’s happening in the welding industry.
Ever wonder how geology, metallurgy, and welding intersect? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Alexis Armstrong, a geologist turned advocate for women in trades. Alexis shares her incredible journey from the depths of Northern Canada's mines to designing inclusive workwear for women. Through her unique lens, she reveals how science and industry are deeply connected and how these intersections can illuminate our understanding of climate change and societal perceptions of STEM and trade professions.
Follow Alexis:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-armstrong-8277b279/
Smoko Podcast: www.smokopodcast.ca
Check out Peggy Workwear:
Website: www.peggyworkwear.ca/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/peggyworkwear
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/peggy-workwear
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
Canaweld: https://canaweld.com/
Josef Gases: https://josefgases.com/
What did you think about this episode? Send a text message to the show!
All right, I can check. Check, I'm good. So I'm Max Duran. Max Duran, cwb Association Welding Podcast, pod pod podcast. Today we have a really cool guest welding podcast. The show is about to begin.
Speaker 1:Attention welders in Canada Looking for top quality welding supplies, 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. Canada Welding Supply, your trusted welding supplier. Happy welding. Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Ceron and, as always, we are finding the stories that you want to hear across this beautiful nation of ours. Today I have a wonderful guest who has a very interesting background, which piques the nerd in me so hard. Because there's so many interesting things I want to ask. We have Alexis Armstrong, who's coming to us from a rare but beautiful sunny day in Vancouver.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? Good, how are you? Thank you so much for coming, for having me on the show. It's so, it's so lovely to be here.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and I love that. You say it's sunny in Vancouver. My parents lived in Richmond for over 20 years and I remember going to you know Vancouver being like it's going to be so awesome, and then it rained every day and I was like, wow, that's not as awesome as I pictured it, but when it is sunny it is beautiful.
Speaker 2:No, it is gorgeous. Honestly, like an hour ago it was torrential rain, so this is a shock to probably everybody in the city and I'm sure by the time this podcast is done we're going to go back to it. You know what I mean done.
Speaker 1:We're gonna go back to it. You know what I mean. Like that is just our, our winter zone. Yeah, you're probably in the eye of a hurricane right now. If I see anything drastic happen, like your roof fly off, I promise I'll call 9-1-1 oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that awesome, alexis, so let's start with a little bit about you. Know your your journey because you know, for people on this show generally it's like right to welding, right um, but yours is a much more like industry adjacent path. I would call to to welding, but still very much in the same sphere, which I think to be honest and most people that listen to the show will have learned by now. We're over 200 episodes in.
Speaker 3:Is that welding?
Speaker 1:thank you, is that welding is not something you can put in a bucket right, it is connected to any and all branches of science and disciplines out there. For yourself, you know your current role is with Peggy's Workwear right, so this is Workwear for Industrial Settings. You are also let's see what I got what else you got. You work with STEM programs, trade programs. You're a big advocate for trades and women in the trades, but that's not where you started.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. That's not where you started, right, not at all. Like I am so adjacent from welding, like it is definitely a complete different zone. I will say that I do have like welding in my family and like welding close to my heart, being my little sister who we started Peggy Workwear basically together and like it truthfully, is like a family company and she's a red sail welder. But I am not a red sail welder at all. Um, I have never held a torch. I'm a geologist is my background. I started in um a sedimentologist sedimentologist.
Speaker 1:I'm a carbonate sedimentologist if we're getting really, really nerdy about it, but sedimentary rocks are a much different classification of rocks, also a different timeline on the world scale in terms of the age of the planet and also the. The way that the, the, that the, what are they called the big plates? The way they move and wait because of the density and the weight of sand creates different pressure zones within the mantle, and I am a nerd like I mean, I was like look at you, go, you're a geologist as well.
Speaker 2:Who's the imposter here? There's many. Honestly, it's just two geologists at this point.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's why when I read that sedimentologist, I immediately the nerd in me is like okay, she's one up in this because most people would just say geologist, right, because it falls with. It's like a sub-discipline of.
Speaker 2:Of geology.
Speaker 1:Of geology, so I probably did a really poor job of rambling about that, but let's explain to the people listening what a sedimentologist does and what that work would look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, I love that you also called out that it was like a subdomain, because I totally put that in there because I'm a geologist that only likes one type of rock, like I don't really love a volcanic don't love a metamorphic. It's not for me. Like I know, volcanoes get all the love and joy and, like excitement, I think they're very boring.
Speaker 2:And I think that the most interesting rock is the sand or like a dirt. You know what I mean. That for me, is my favorite thing. But I actually started in mining. So I started working in industry and working up north in Canada, ontario and BC in mining that was all underground or exploration Realized the rocks weren't really for me. Again, I loved the industry, loved working underground, loved being in the woods for the summer. Thought that was incredible. But I was like, honestly, my heart is in dirt. I am a dirt person and that is where I need to go.
Speaker 2:So I studied carbonate sedimentology, which is the study of ancient reef systems. So reefs, as you know, is like go and snorkel in any tropical environment. I look at ancient ones and I kind of look at those and try to understand the paleo environment of that time. So I looked at. My main focus was looking at rocks around 600 million years ago and then trying to understand that setting. So like what did that look like in terms of water depth, water chemistry, what did that look like in terms of heat? Who was swimming about in this little sea and what was going on in the middle of Canada when it was completely at equator?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm in Saskatchewan Underwater, so you know.
Speaker 3:So I live in that I live in this world of sedimentology.
Speaker 1:This is why we have potash. This is why we have the elements that we have here and why in Saskatchewan if people don't know this I can go out to any creek and find fossils, now Like there's literally fossils everywhere in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so cool, like it's across the entire prairies and like that's really what I studied. But that was from like an academic point of view, but from a work perspective. What I did with that like academic study is I went and I worked for the US government and I worked for a program called IODP. It has so many acronyms because science. I don't know if Weldon's like this, but we are obsessed with acronyms, but it's the International Ocean Discovery Program.
Speaker 2:It's been named a million different things throughout history. It was actually started in the 1950s, late 1950s, 60s by the CIA, which is a crazy story in its own.
Speaker 1:But it's like a deep sea. We need to know about those pesky oceans.
Speaker 2:Honestly, no, you know, what they needed to know is they needed to bring up a Russian sub that sank. So they built this, like incredible, one of one deep sea drilling vessel that had a hole called the Moon Pool that could drill down, drill down into the ocean sea floor and actually do scientific exploration. But they did two. They did one as like a fake scientist boat and one for the CIA to get this up.
Speaker 2:But, then what they found out was like hey, there's actually really good science down here, and there's actually a lot to discover.
Speaker 2:A whole other world. So like that was like the birth of the program back in the like late 50s, early 60s and then it's just continued ever since. It's an international research program. It goes all around the world. You live on basically like a deep sea drill rig. So you live on a drill rig and I did that for like five, six years of doing two month expeditions at sea. Our bread and butter is climate change, but we also look at trying to understand.
Speaker 1:Future trends, things that are coming.
Speaker 2:Future trends. A lot of it is honestly like helping people to try to understand, to be like what are hurricanes going to look like if we get a little bit hotter? If that current changes, what's that going to be in terms of like impact to people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, glacier runoff, desalinization of the waters, everything.
Speaker 2:Everything. It's just, it's all public data and it's just for, like, the mankind. Really Anyone can go in and they can look at our data and they could be like what did you guys do?
Speaker 1:Those are the kind of things I read at you know. Three in the morning it's, honestly, it's a good. Three in the morning, it's a good like YouTube kind of.
Speaker 2:Reddit energy of just like going down and deep diving and looking at photos of rocks that were from the bottom of the seafloor. I can give you a bunch of links to look at that because it is really really cool. But that's my background, so it's completely different from welding. Me and Andrea. We always kind of lived a little bit like bookends because I went the maritime industry uh, living on a deep sea drill rig and she went to like welding deep sea drill rigs and creating the boat.
Speaker 1:So we were both in the maritime industry but you're still in the same part of the library, right?
Speaker 2:totally like. It's just like very different, but we'd have the same experiences of being like, hey, what do you find like living at port, what do you find that looks like? Or like working in this environment and, um, one was like an active ship and one was building a ship. But yeah, anyways, that's my background, that's kind of so. There's so much there.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's that's like a week of of fun talks over beers um you know I always I well, I'm not always, I mean I I listen to weird things and I'm an avid reader, but I remember reading years ago that the reefs of the world are like the lungs of the ocean because they support, like, a kind of their own biome. They have a life of their own where they, you know, produce other living beings throughout their biome structure but are alive themselves. Beings throughout their biome structure but are alive themselves. But because they are so carbon dense, as as living structures, that their skeletal remains, as they are, are actually like, almost like pre-fossilized, before they even die so like 100, yeah, that's am I on the right track here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you are, yeah, so like 1000 right so they're able to basically give you a very accurate read of their environment, um based off you know, their age or even their location, their depth or whatever. Now, I'd imagine that that is both incredibly interesting but also scary, because you're gonna be getting probably some information that you're like oh, that's not good right like.
Speaker 2:It is like, um, the only thing that I would add to the, to the carbonate thing or to the like reforming bugs basically like the organisms of what they are.
Speaker 2:Um. So we have a little like catchy phrase that they're the only rocks that are born, not made, and you're 100% right that they secrete their own skeleton. They're constantly growing and they're kind of it's a fancy word for like as they're solidifying and changing while they're living, is diagenesis, or like it's basically just changing as they're living, as they're dying, but it's secreting carbon and what we can do and how we do most of our research is we really look at the low magnesium calcite is kind of what we go to and within that calcite you don't really need to know all these crazy big words, but we're looking at oxygen and carbon and the isotopes of that.
Speaker 1:So that's, exactly welding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when you get. When you get to metallurgy, you're going to magnetite, you're going to.
Speaker 1:You're going to all these same things and they're all just combinations of oxygen within lattice structures and they'll because all crystals will will revert back to an original lattice structure yes, unless something unless something deforms it or or. Is a an alloy, or a or alloy or what's the other word A bad thing. Something that gets added in yeah, yeah, something that's not supposed to be within that structure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's exactly it. So we look at like there's three different types of carbonate. There's aragonite, high-meg calcite and calcite. Both think of aragonite and high-meg calcite that they have the bad stuff within their they have alloys within them. They're not stable, right so those are going to be constantly changing.
Speaker 2:But if we can look at low-meg calcite, what we can do is we can look at the isotopes of oxygen and carbon and then we can from that that gives you temperature and productivity. And so those are two huge things of trying to understand environment that instantly tells you how healthy a water body is but also tells you temperature, kind of gives you a better idea of where you are in terms of paleo environment. But then from your point of being like we're doing this crazy research, it's so cool. It's like 27 countries are working together on one project.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the International Space Station, but at sea. It's a fantastic, beautiful thing. But then at the same time we're taking samples and we're finding, like microplastics in Antarctica and like Antarctic bottom water to be like. This is the slowest recharge current. There should be nothing in here.
Speaker 1:There should be no human signature and the fact that there is already microplastics here is terrifying, so that there is like definitely, there's always that sharp edge of science where you're like oh, this is cool, but oh no yeah, to be like the data's telling us that we are in some troubled waters, literally, literally, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because in the realm of metallurgy and science, there is also a paleoanalysis of metals through their oxide excretion, right? So stainless steel, which is considered to be non-ox, non-oxidizing, is actually and that's that's not true. Stainless steel does oxidize, but it oxidizes in layers of protection, so it actually the older stainless gets, the more oxygen resistant it gets, and you can measure that depth of resistance to know how old a piece of stainless is. Stainless is still new enough in our society that now it's like all. Within a couple hundred years it doesn't really matter. But at some point, a million years from now, someone will be able to date our structures right now in society using stainless steel very accurately. It'll be one of the things that someone's gonna stumble across and be like. This material gives us dating very well and very consistently Right. So I, I, I like, I, like we said to start the show, the, the, the overlaps are always there in the, in the, in the metals world and in the world you're doing.
Speaker 2:Completely, no, completely agree. And like it is just me and Andrea. We've obviously talked about this a lot. We talk about this in our family a lot of because our, so our family. I'll back up a little bit. So our family is like a union based family. We are a blue collar family, like our parents were the only people in their family to get an education, they were the first to get higher education. But maybe some of the other people that we've grown up with are like family, friends or who knows well, maybe look down on andrea's career as a welder sometimes and like not close family friends, but there is a stigma.
Speaker 2:There is a stigma again there is a definite stigma and um, you'd be lying to say that it doesn't exist in terms of how people look at andrea and the decision that she made to become a welder. And in our family, one we come from like a blue collar background and come from the trades background, but we always have viewed, and our parents have always kind of viewed, trades and science as one of the same. Andrea is just more hands-on with it, but she's still a scientist.
Speaker 2:She's still like a metallurgist really at the heart of hearts in terms of welding, but, um, she's just lighting things on fire whereas we're looking at it underneath the microscope. But it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 1:We're very very similar yeah, using a mass spectrometer is still lighting it on fire, just a real fancy fire like a very small, tiny little micro fire yeah, but like it's the same idea, it's the same like principle, same concepts, and I do think that there's kind of this overlap between science and trades.
Speaker 1:I always have, but that was also taught to us like we were lucky enough to be well, and that's that's a very key thing that you bring up because, like I look at my career, I went to university first I had a visions of being an academic and it was put on me at a young age like, oh, I'm good at school, you're going to be an academic, you run with it. But my family's blue collar you know, but they were like you get to escape the blue collar life by becoming an academic. Then I had a kid in university. Well, that throws everything out the window. I need money. So I started welding because my dad was a welder, so I had that introduction into it. In all my career of welding there was always still this sort of little cloud that followed me of I didn't reach my potential, this kind of idea where like you could have been more if you would have stayed academic, and I will never reach you.
Speaker 1:Know, my kids are fed, they're in good schools. I got a house, my life is great, everything's great, but there's still this cloud that I felt followed me around until I became a college professor, and it wasn't until I finally returned to academia, now as an instructor yeah that it was like okay, now you've done something and I really took offense to that.
Speaker 1:I'm like you know, these last 20 years of my life that I've been building my career and doing all this stuff and night classes and training and all this stuff and supporting my family, all of that was just meh. You know, it's just mid because it's blue collar. No, that needs to go in the garbage.
Speaker 2:That needs to go yeah, that needs to go yeah, and I think, like with us, like my, our parents, obviously they always wanted us to do a higher education, but they always would have a caveat with higher education of what does that mean? And trade school and university was always on the same level and it was always presented as being like that is higher education, like you have to go, and trade school and university was always on the same level and it was always presented as being like that is higher education, Like you have to go past high school and you have to do something, whether it's university or it's trade school.
Speaker 1:That's fine, but they're on the level.
Speaker 2:They're on the same level. And I think too, with my, my dad. He was the first in um again both of my parents, but on my dad's side he would go to university but then he would go up north to like far, far, far north and build construction platforms up in the Beaufort, and so for him he also always knew to be like guys at 19,. Go into industry, like that is the quickest way for financial independence he has all daughters.
Speaker 2:He was like financial independence for women is so important, and especially from a young age, because you have so much agency. So he was a big component of being like doesn't matter where you do, even if you've decided to go to university, you're going into industry, like as soon as you hit 19,. You're going up North because you can make a lot of money and you can support yourself at a very young age and you build some skills that will help your academic career Completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is why I started in mining so young, and it's also why Andrea started in mills so young as well, we had the same kind of trajectory.
Speaker 1:So my background is in mining here in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 2:I came up in mining.
Speaker 1:Potash.
Speaker 1:Yeah potash and I worked for years first for the steel mill, then the potash and then for potash adjacent, so building machinery and equipment for pot ash mining and um. And it really was the crux of my career because there's no real way to do mining without kind of learning metallurgy as well. You do kind of have to pick up that piece of it in order to to be safe and to know what's going on in in the mining world. I saw on your, on your like, your cv that you sent in sort of like know that you were in the mining industry and you worked in mining. I don't know if a lot of people outside of the mining industry realize how science heavy mining is.
Speaker 1:You know if you work in a production shop or a fab shop you really like, aside from the math and the, you know the algebra, the trig side of it, you're not really expected to know much about anything else um outside of what you're building.
Speaker 1:But when you work on sites, mining sites, and whether you're underground or a solution, mine or, or you know, open pit, there is so much training that goes in prior, during and post to make sure that you're safe and doing a good job, because these environments are wild, right yeah, and there's so many sciences involved, like I remember waiting for the geologists to finish their test because you know you got so far and then you got to wait. They come in, they take their samples, they do their stuff. Then you got to wait for the engineers to come in and check the structures and supports and there's all these levels of science happening around you that are so interesting now for you. You know in your, in your, you know, coming up through the mining industry, what was the roles that you had in the mining industry, either before you started your academia or during.
Speaker 2:You know so I love that you brought that up above, like kind of what mining is like, because I do think it is such a like a world of itself and if you've never been underground, if you, it's really hard to like conceptualize that, to be like what does that mean? And I love that you brought in that there's so much science on every single task, because for me it was the opposite.
Speaker 2:There was so much trade to every single task and that was the first time at being 19 of being working with like guys that are also being paid by the clock and like being like the scoop operator and like all the guys in the fab shop to be like, hurry up with that sample, like tape that damn wall and tell us where to go and what do they always say under the mind?
Speaker 1:Like those guys are always like every 15 minutes is a million dollars, like stuff like that no-transcript, that everybody gets the best for them at that.
Speaker 2:Gets paid and like gets also paid safely, and then we do this all together and that we're really efficient. But I also loved learning about every single operator, what they were doing. Like that guy's doing the blast, these guys are the drillers, but they're diamond drillers. That are different than this type of drilling. Scoop operator is very different than a truck driver. This is like all the different heavy machinery in itself of, just like all the operators, is incredible to see.
Speaker 2:So that was a really wonderful thing that I've always taken from mining and that's always something that I really loved that I kind of miss the heavy industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I miss that smell of like coming down in the cage and everyone's like in their coveralls and yet like there's just something about it. That's really cool. But I left the mining industry fairly junior. So my background, even though I started in it it was really, truthfully, an undergrad and right afterwards, and then I switched to academia and to to research, but, um, what does the mine look like?
Speaker 2:rendered, that was my very first job, was 3D modeling and then I worked up in like exploration and really like low scale exploration. A mine is not even on the plan yet.
Speaker 3:We don't even know.
Speaker 2:if there's enough, we're like 30 years past before there's going to be a mine, so I worked on that side. That's mostly prospecting and soil sampling really and doing kind of grids and some geophysics work and some helicopter work, but that's again really like.
Speaker 1:Really at the top edge of it, yeah top edge.
Speaker 2:And then what I loved the most about it was going in production. I was a production gal at my heart of hearts about it was going in production. I was a production gal at my heart of hearts Like I was just enamored that everything could kill you and that it was just such a wild environment but in some weird way it was so peaceful because it was like too much chaos going on. That.
Speaker 1:I found it very calming. You just focus on your little piece and let the chaos reign. Yeah, completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that at that point again I was still a junior geo.
Speaker 1:so, um, I was a junior geo. Oh, I love that term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, junior geo I was helping my senior geo right like I was.
Speaker 2:So I was basically just like in a truck, um, and helping map out where we're going in terms of, like, development of the mind. So where do they have to drill in, where's the ore going, how, what is the grade of the ore? Um, what formation are we in? And kind of mapping out underground. So a lot of it is mapping, um, or grading and kind of understanding where we're moving in terms of that, and then with that, all of the guys can do their mind planning and do all of their operations. Um, but the best part about that, what I loved, is the mind that I was working at in order to make it efficient and also to like decrease safety risk. Instead of going up to a face to do our tagging, to be like, yeah, this has 20% gold, please go that direction. Um, they gave us a paintball gun and so we'd sit on our Toyota with a paintball gun and just like shoot it to be like, yeah, go that way.
Speaker 2:And that was like all my day was getting paid to like drive around and shoot at walls with a paintball gun and I was like this is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1:Well, gold mines are notorious for being some of the most dangerous mines uh to work at um. So that was a learning experience for me, because I worked in potash, which is fairly safe. It's saline, pretty much brine. And then I went to Africa West Africa to work at the world's largest gold mine, newmont mine in Ghana. It was the largest gold mine in the world and also the most unsafe mine in the world.
Speaker 1:It was something like 200 fatalities a year or something like that. It's. It was unreal. I went down there on a world project to help build a training center to increase safety because, just like africa went through the blood diamond era, they started going through the blood gold area where people were not buying gold from unsafe mines anymore. So this mine being owned by a canadian company, newmont they they decided to like we're gonna fix this, we're gonna try to fix this. And I was a part of a two year program there to build these training centers and I it's when I realized like I mean, I thought I was pretty cool because I worked in potash mines and I've been to a couple uranium mines, but gold mines are a whole nother headspace. I was like man, these things, I mean there's like the byproducts of what you're digging up are dangerous. You like mercuries.
Speaker 1:You got like all these cyanide and it's funny because you go after potash, you're chasing salt. It was really not too much, right. You're just chasing salt and if you find the radioactive salt, hooray, you got the good one. But uh, but the gold was another game altogether. A whole nother wind like aspect of industry. I had to wrap my head around, right wow, that's a crazy.
Speaker 2:I could only imagine that experience, like I've only ever experienced mining in canada.
Speaker 1:I've never done it in a different even just driving up to the mine, I was like oh boy I've never seen something this big before. Like this would fit 10 of our minds. Like what the heck?
Speaker 2:that's insane, yeah, the scale alone. But like also the safety and like the culture of like being underground. I couldn't imagine like underground is dangerous enough, mining is dangerous enough, but like to have that many fatalities a year, I oh yeah, and it was like normal it was like oh yeah, well, you know, you live with mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that's part of the job, it's like no it is. It isn't guys?
Speaker 2:no, no, no it was like that was. One thing that I always will be really, really thankful for is I got paired up with a fantastic geologist that was from newfoundland and he was so safety conscious like he was the most safety conscious and he would not risk to shut down production if things were happening like off the book and I thought that that was like very, very brave of him that's the right example to set, yeah exactly so like I was always felt very, very comfortable working underground, but it was because I was with good people.
Speaker 2:That was like that's not bolted, we're not even going to step foot in there, like we're not getting there for three more days because you have to bolt that like get out of here, get at it, yeah.
Speaker 2:So like that was just very lovely being like a young woman in mining and in that space, to have somebody like that to work with was really good so these skills that you're picking up mines working with your senior geo because you're a junior geo I gotta use that term you know and you're picking up these skills, then they send you out on a boat yeah how much of these skills transfer directly to the work you're doing underwater?
Speaker 2:so, um, not as many. In terms of like, that's a hard question. It's a good question. Um, so the science doesn't change. The geology is still Like, the like theory is the same. What changes is how? Maybe the mentality of it is a big change of like. We're not doing it for economic reasons. We're not here to mine, we're not here to explore and we're not really caring about what our assay is coming back or how much our ore is graded at Like.
Speaker 2:We're really just there for, for science and trying to understand, um, paleo environment, or trying to understand what is happening in this setting, and because we're part of an organization that had been around for so long and on it unfortunately just ended last year, the funding was just revoked, which is a very, very sad day, but, um, because it had been running for so long, a lot of it was really cut and paste, because the part about research is you have to do the same measurement over and over and over again to be able to look at the data and actually have like an accurate understanding of what's happening.
Speaker 2:If you have too much error in data. You're like it's not.
Speaker 3:why are we even yeah, why are we even looking at this Like there's like nothing?
Speaker 2:here to compare. So, um, that was a new mindset of being like we're not doing this for economic, we're really doing this for research and we're doing this for a global record keeper of climate, and so we have to be precise and perfect on this data. So that means that it almost turns more into an engineering and lab tech, lab tech role. A little bit I've been like is my instrument correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, I was about to bring up metrology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, like it really comes down to mythology, like that was a big change, right. So it becomes less theoretical and less mapping. And then, all of a sudden is engineering, and the thing with the boat that I will say was a shock. When I first got on my first, my first expedition ever, I remember my um, my instrument broke and I went up to my boss and I was like my it's, it's broken. And she was like cool. I was like yeah, Che, like it's gone. And she was like what the are you going to do about it? And I was like sorry, what? Like I'm not an engineer one yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm a geologist.
Speaker 2:And she was like absolutely not, you're an engineer now. Like you're responsible for this task, like learn and.
Speaker 1:I was like we're a kilometer underwater.
Speaker 2:We're not stopping at home hardware like completely like that was exactly her point and she was like well, like um, and I was like I don't even know where to start, and she was like read a book see you later come grab me, if you need me.
Speaker 2:But like this is like your, this is really your task, and so that was something that was really cool of being like, all of a sudden, all the responsibilities on you. When something breaks, you need to fix it. It's really much like band-aids and like wd-40, to be like how is this working? But um, from somebody from a science background, I also had to learn. I'm not going to say that I'm like good at any skilled trades, especially not on this show, but I had to learn enough to be like can you fix?
Speaker 2:your machine yeah, exactly Can you like, not get hurt and can you like? Fix what you need to fix and go from there. So that was a big change was really like you are on your own, you are doing every single task. You are learning every single task. If you've never used this like this tool or this instrument, you're going to learn now. Welcome to the ship. Well, I love that.
Speaker 1:In a conversation I had a few weeks ago with some colleagues, we started talking about percentages. It's kind of weird. You try to, I guess, quantify sometimes things that are hard to quantify. And we were talking about ambition and like you can train a lot of things, you can teach a lot of things, you can mentor a lot of things, but ambition is one of the things that kind of you got it or you don't, and we say that quite a bit.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've even thought these things, but yeah but then it's like well, what's ambition then, on a scale of one to ten, you know like what's what, what are you looking for? And we were like you know well that top 10 you're never gonna find, and you know what I mean. It's starting to look at that, and one of the aspects that one of my friends brought up was the walking, the walk away ratio. You know, like, when you come to an obstacle and then your ambition to not just because there's ambition to like yeah, I want this project to succeed.
Speaker 1:But, then the ambition when things go bad. Yeah, so this now, like your tool broke. Where's your ambition now? Now that changes things? Because like, yeah, I want the project to succeed, but now, right now, this thing is broken. Where's your ambition to overcome this hurdle? And you had to kind of go to somebody outside of you to be like, no, no, no, this is you. This isn't a derail, this is a. This is that you are now learning a new thing. Welcome to to that being ambitious, right and um, and that's a hard thing to quantify and I wish you could find a way to train it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like it's.
Speaker 1:it's very interesting. You really learn a lot about somebody when things go wrong, Right.
Speaker 2:Oh, completely no, I love this. I love this theme and I love this kind of conversation that you had. I think it's so interesting and I definitely agree with it. I think either you have or you don't, but I do think it's also like you can learn it.
Speaker 2:Like I definitely learned it and I think my original was like very rule bound to be like this is my job and this is my role and this is my expertise and I. But what I was loved is that I had a mentor that was like really pushed me to that. But I also think I learned it only because I had to.
Speaker 3:I think I was in such an extreme environment that like you were totally like lost at sea.
Speaker 2:If you didn't do it and I don't know that would be really hard to then walk away from yeah, yeah come back to the real world and like, try to implement that and try to teach that same thing, because I think a lot of people do need uh, um, like black or white binary situation where you're like I gotta do it, or else it just won't happen yeah, exactly like there's really no option here, um, but that would be hard to replicate somewhere else, I think I don't know.
Speaker 2:I was very lucky that it was an extreme environment, and how long did you do that for?
Speaker 1:like until just now, until like recently, yeah yeah, until like very recently.
Speaker 2:So like again, it'd be like two months on, two months off, um, and so it was just a long time at sea, I think. When I did the math like cumulatively cumulatively, however you say that word I think I was at sea, like in the water for like three and a half years or something like that. Back to back would be my life.
Speaker 1:So you got good sea legs. You don't get seasick no more, or did you ever? Some people are bad with it, some people are not right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we had some scientists and like some techs that would be sick for like 20 years and I was like I would have quit this job 20 years ago. If that was me, luckily I was okay, but we did go through like crazy weather. We had some. Really, we are not a fast boat, we're also drilling like into the um sea floor. Because of that, we're usually in like 3 000 meter water depth and that is a lot of pipe to trip.
Speaker 2:So you like down um, it just means that we're really slow, so when a storm happens we're usually not able to move you're sitting, and so yeah, usually we just have to brace and we have to like maybe bring like out of the hole if we have enough warning, but like, even then you're just tethered sitting and we are tethered and it. So we did have some crazy, crazy weather and there was a couple like um, hurricanes are always less out at sea, but there was like huge storms that we went through.
Speaker 1:That was pretty like most of the bad weather you experienced because of the elevation change actually underwater. So if you're in deep enough water it's less, but then the waves although waves are crazy, but the waves are crazy because then you get. You know well, I guess, when you're out at sea at that depth, that they're not waves anymore, it's swells, right, like it's the whole swell, like the whole, like 30 kilometers around you is going up 10, you know, like.
Speaker 2:It's insane, yeah, like so. Hurricanes are so temperature dependent and they kind of need like land in order to, like, really wreak havoc. They love a good continent, but they're still pretty like crazy gnarly storms in terms of wind and swell, and we would just be like there's a couple ones that we'd be like sitting at the galley, and then, all of a sudden, one person. You would just hear, oh, because they'd like see nothing but blue yeah, and then it was just like food and cups and like everything was just whoosh.
Speaker 1:Like everyone to one side of the ship, like it was just broken arms, broken hands, anything like that ever happened.
Speaker 2:No, um, there was some medical stuff. Luckily we were okay on that one. We were really lucky because no one got hurt in the kitchen, like that's where I've seen videos of people like literally off their feet, flying through the air like yeah, it's like, it's pretty. It can be pretty gnarly Like we've had a couple the drill floor in the kitchen whenever there's big swells. That's like the like very, very dangerous point. Everywhere is dangerous. But those are like the two that you're like you're actively drilling and you're actively like with boiling water.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden, the ship has changed. Like yeah, like, please be okay, Like you're like with knives and boiling water, and then one other is just with like rotating moving equipment that is like bigger than their head and you're like also, please be okay, I love it.
Speaker 1:All right, we got to take a break for advertisers because we're having way too much fun here, so we'll be back right away here on the CWB Association podcast with Alexis Armstrong, who's telling us amazing stories. We're loving this, all right, so don't go anywhere, we'll be right back. Looking for top-quality welding machines and accessories, look no further than CannaWeld. Based in Vaughan, ontario, cannaweld designs, assembles and tests premium welding machines right here in Canada. Our products are CSA certified and Ontario-made approved, reflecting our unwavering commitment to excellence. Count on us for superior service that's faster and more efficient than market competitors. Whether you're in aerospace, education or any other precision welding industry, cannaweld has the perfect welding solution for you. Visit CannaWeldcom today to discover why professionals rely on CannaWeld for their welding needs. Cannaweld where welding needs. Cannaweld where precision meets reliability in welding. Enjoy peace of mind with our four-year warranty on most machines. Conditions do apply.
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Speaker 1:And we are back on the cwb association podcast. Thanks for tuning back in. I am here. I'm here with Alexis Armstrong coming to us from Vancouver. We have been talking about her journey as an academic through very tactile-based industries mining, you know, ocean-based research. These are the type of jobs where you know very much. Science and practical skills go hand in hand. There's really not one without the other. How you know, when you're looking at kind of on sea versus on land skills development, do you see much difference or are they kind of the same peoples? Because you're going to have engineers and construction people and millwrights on a ship, you're going to have the mechanics, you're going to, you know, kind of all the same job roles are around, but, you know, does everyone look like the typical french sailor on a boat? No, like you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Like I just know it's a good question. I'm just like I'm picturing what sailors actually look like. Um, I think there is a difference. I think anyone who works at sea is just like land, but crazy, like literally the crazy.
Speaker 2:I think you have to be a little bit like yeah absolutely off your rocker to be like I'm gonna be comfortable staring at nothing but blue and living on a boat with 120 people only 120 people for like 80 days or something ridiculous but the skies, the skies that died out in the middle of the ocean, the way the moon looks like you can literally just touch it like that.
Speaker 2:You don't get that on land no, and like it's a very romantic, like it is a very cool um experience and I'm really happy that I did it. Like I no regrets at all. I was also able, like with work, to travel all around the world and like that was so lucky. Like in what opportunity and like what world does that get given to you to be like hey, do you want to go to Guam? And you're like I don't even know where Guam is, but like why not?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Sure, I bet the food is great.
Speaker 2:Like it was. Yeah, it was actually. It was like kind of like hawaiian um, but it was like. That experience was really cool. But I do think that there's a difference, um, in terms of people. I think sailors are absolutely crazy. I think they are just like like yeah, think of your like grizzled old, maybe not french, but like an old, grizzled man with a lot of wrinkles at like 28, and that is your like the salt, the salt burn skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like the leather skin and the like smoking a cigarette, while they're like doing something that is I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. That is a very romanticized notion. I'm glad it's true. Yeah, so how did this start opening your eyes you know, your career to, to your current endeavors? Because you know there's a. There's a few things here you know. Number one you've devoted a lot of time to advocate for women in the industries. You know, is that something that came up through your time working in industries? Is this something you felt you wanted to do, perhaps even pre-industry, you know, as a young woman? Where did that advocacy part come in? And you know how does it, how does it affect your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, thank you. This is a very wonderful question. I think, honestly, it's something that I was trying to figure out, like where this came from, but I think it just grew as I started working in geology and then also started working in industry or industrial settings. I went to school in Nova Scotia, so it's a small little school anyways, but I think I was like one of two in women within my grad class.
Speaker 3:Of the geologists Of the geologists, right.
Speaker 2:Like there was really not many women, there was only one professor who is like an icon and a legend Dr Sandra Barb. But like other, than that there was really no one that we could see to be like. This is a woman in geology, like it was just always apparent to be like you're gonna geology male very, very, very male dominated. It's.
Speaker 2:A lot of people go into geology after forestry, so it has a very similar energy to forestry honestly, they're very similar, um, in terms of but I think that is kind of where it came from and then it just built like it was just something to be like, continuously being. I'm like one of the only women here I'm talking to my like bosses if I'm lucky enough to have a woman boss which I have been to, like my colleagues, maybe the other two women on site like we're instantly bonding on the fact that, like this experience and this industry, this environment was really not designed for us and is very obviously not designed for us and like everyone else in the setting.
Speaker 2:Even though I met some wonderful men that were like fantastic and advocates for like for women in non-traditional roles, they still were like yeah, okay, like it's just you. And like Kathy, like are you guys? Okay, like, do you guys have clothes Like. Are you like? They were like taking care of us, but it was always very much like a um noticeable.
Speaker 2:Noticeable that we were like really on our own and, at the same time, like going back to my sister, who's a red cell welder. Again, me and Andrea are bookends, like I was going through this experience in STEM and in mining, she was going through the same experience in trades and we were really having even though we were at different sides of the country, we were having the same kind of culture, issues and problems. We were also having this like one thing that I think really changed it. We are having these conversations with people outside of the industry and I think what was common from people who are maybe outside of it, who didn't understand it a lot of times, when they would come up and ask me and Andrea about our jobs, it was be a welder Like how hard is it to be a geologist, and this is heavy too.
Speaker 2:but they'd be like are you, have you been harassed, have you been assaulted, have you been in danger? And all of those culture problems exist because we are few and far in between within these environments. Those exist, I'm not saying that they don't and I'm not saying that that's not a problem that we have to solve. But it was a very odd um framing that that was the only that's top of mind, not.
Speaker 1:Are you a successful geologist or?
Speaker 2:have you like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know like kind of the normal questions would come up in conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was nothing really about like our identity. It felt very much like the questions about us in that space wasn't our own, it wasn't our own storytelling, it wasn't our own experience. Yeah, we didn't really have control of that. To be able to be like yes, there's all these cultural problems that we are actively within the community, trying to change. But I'm also working with this bad name, che, who's been on this boat since the 90s, who's like from Taiwan. She's incredible. I'm obsessed with her. She's taught me all these things Like I love this type of carbonate rock, like no one's talking to Andrea to be like I learned this, like this thing for welding and I'm really excited about like all the welds that I did yesterday. There's no joy and there's no like technical ability in terms of um of the questions that we were getting, and so I think that, coupled with the known cultural problems, really focused us to be like OK, let's do something here.
Speaker 2:Let's kind of maybe broadcast this a little bit. Let's start with storytelling, let's go there first to be like, let's talk to women in the community and let's try to create a platform where everybody can tell their stories and talk about like the joys of their job. And again, let's kind of break this down. We were lucky enough with our parents that they put STEM and trades on the same pedestal. That doesn't happen often. Let's put that onto a platform.
Speaker 2:Let's really talk about trades as we should talk about them, that they are scientists and let's put or engineers, like let's put them at that level, because that's where they deserve to be. And let's equalize that conversation and again, talk to everybody in different industries and really focus on who are they, what do they love about their job, what are they excited about their job or their industry? And then, if they do want to go there to be like, is there problems with your jobs that you would like to talk about? And like, let's create a safe space for women to talk about that, let's go there, but only if you would like to. And I think, like that's the problems of culture. I think it's really important if it comes from the community and I think that's what we were trying to do.
Speaker 2:We were trying to take back that narrative and expand that narrative as well and expand that platform to be like who's in these conversations and what industries are we actually talking about? So we're not just talking to welders, we're also going to talk to iron workers, to carpenters, to foresters, to um climate scientists, to whoever wants to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it feels very um unauthentic. Is that a word? And it feels very unauthentic. Is that a word? Inauthentic?
Speaker 3:Inauthentic, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:When you hear the preach coming from above, down right, when it's not organic, when it's not community-based, and you hear like you know, like the CEO of some company come out and be like we're going to be more diverse. And you're like, oh, immediately, everyone's like company come out and be like we're gonna be more diverse. And you're like, immediately, everyone's like what do you mean? And you know, like I mean, I'm an immigrant, I'm a person of color.
Speaker 1:For me it's like, oh well, you're gonna hire a couple more brown guys tomorrow, yay and women probably have the same thoughts, you know, like what token move is gonna is gonna happen at the end of the day if you don't have the storytelling. And this is so much, like you know, when you look at indigenous cultures and how they maintain their, their histories, their oral histories, they really had something figured out there that if you can't tell the story and repeat it to another person, you didn't get the story yeah you didn't get it.
Speaker 1:You can say a lot of words, but you didn't get it right. So so, when, if you want things to catch and you want people to get it, they got got to be authentic, they got to be real, they got to matter. And that means joy, that means sorrow, that means up, that means down right, like it doesn't mean just just like oh, my job sucks because of X, but it's also like I love this part of my job because of Y. You know what I mean. And trying to hit those things.
Speaker 2:No, I, I can't agree more with that and I love that example because it's nuanced and I think that's what's missing in terms of like, I think even like CEOs or or from top down, I think it's. I don't think anyone's come in with militia and everyone's coming with like, trying to make it better, but maybe failing to understand what does that actually mean in terms of the environment? Because these are niche spaces, like, again, it's hard to picture what a mine looks like unless you've been in one to be like, okay, what are the problems associated within that niche environment?
Speaker 2:And, I think, given nuance to stories and, I think, having no expectation that there's going to be, like a little bit of good, a little bit of bad, and then letting a story evolve, and really my job, or like how I view our job of like this MoCo podcast and even Peggy Workwear, is we're honestly just a platform for others, like we are here for you, that you can come on our show when you can be yourself. Like it is really we're not trying to brand you, we're not trying to put you in terms of a certain idea.
Speaker 1:We're even not really talking that much throughout the episode Like this is just for you to tell your story however you'd like to. We're not trying to get you on the next five dollar bill and change the world.
Speaker 2:I mean, if it happens, awesome, but incredible yeah yeah, but like that's the, the mission is really just authenticity. Well, let's talk about that. You segued yourself perfectly well done you know.
Speaker 1:So the smoko podcast how long has it been running? This is your baby or you know.
Speaker 2:Tell us about the inception and plan here I mean the inception, I think was like already, like that spiel of being like okay, where are we gonna? Do for advocacy. That is the inception. Like that was really like okay, let's do something to change culture. This is how we can do it. I think this is the most important part. Um, I honestly I'm a bad historian. I have no idea when I started it, I think maybe like a year and a bit ago like it just has you make history sound.
Speaker 1:When you said you're a bad historian, I'm like she's gonna say 30 years, a year and a half. Come on you.
Speaker 2:I think it's like a year and a half like like it's, but it's been such a whirlwind like I, honestly, when, when I started it, I like not started it as a joke, but like i's, but it's been such a whirlwind.
Speaker 3:Like.
Speaker 2:I honestly, when, when I started it, I like not started it as a joke, but like I didn't expect it to like people to say, yes, you know what?
Speaker 3:I mean so.
Speaker 2:I emailed so many people to be like hey, do you want to come on this crazy, weird show? And I got everybody's said yes.
Speaker 1:And I was like okay.
Speaker 2:And like there's supposed to be what like a episode a week, I think gives you like 42 episodes or something like that. I think like roughly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I aim for 50 a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we did 74 in our first season.
Speaker 3:It was too many.
Speaker 2:It was like it was too many, but it was just. It was one of those ones that I couldn't say no, you're going to catch up to me in no time, man. Like it was just I've toned it back for season two because, I'm like it was, it was too many to do.
Speaker 2:But like, um, like, what a, what a beautiful thing that like we asked the community to be like hey guys, would you be interested in this? Like, do you think like maybe an iron worker might be interested in hearing the story of like a fisher woman up in like Newfoundland and everyone was like yeah yeah, we do and so we're like okay, let's go for it.
Speaker 2:And so it's just a one-on-one um one-on-one interview show, um, it's again a little bit of everything. I try to get as many people as possible. If anyone's listening and they want to come on the show, we'll go quickly to 74 again. Who am I kidding? It's probably gonna do the same. There is a thing called boundaries that maybe we need to quickly to 74 again who am I kidding?
Speaker 1:it's probably gonna do the same. There is a thing called boundaries that maybe we need to talk to you about.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm not great with them but, I have been told they exist well, once you find them, please let me know, because it'll trickle down, it'll trickle down. I love it. But, um, yeah, that's the show really. And like, one cool thing that's been kind of evolving is this idea. We did a live one at a conference at CC West recently and that was really cool. That was like very nerve wracking, but it was a cool thing to be a live show.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we've done live for a couple of years now and there are a lot of work. We've gotten to the point where we're doing live panels now. That's a lot. That's a lot Sometimes, I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Congratulations on doing that, though.
Speaker 1:Well, you're always just trying to find ways To communicate the stories better, and even sometimes I have different guests, like a guest here and then a guest there, and I think those two personalities were just so amazing If I could get them in the same room. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Things like that you know, but uh, how do you go about finding your guests? Like you know you're 74 women that you brought on, or I don't know if they're all women or not, but um yeah, so the 74 women you brought on. You know what's the directory like. You know what's the directory like you know, women in work.
Speaker 2:You are instagram, you know it's honestly a little bit of I'm kind of a go with the flow type of type of gal. So if like a opportunity presents, I usually will just say yes and like let's go for it, let's see where that goes. So that's been a lot recently. Has just been like somebody has reached out or like with you guys of like meeting somebody through linkedin or like with you guys have like meeting somebody through linkedin or through an event and then be like hey, do you want to work together?
Speaker 2:let's do something. So, um, that's been the recent, but to start, I honestly was really, really lucky that working on that boat for so long, I met incredible women you had a pretty good repertoire already, yeah I had a very like good base and they're all very kind and they're very nice friends and have cool jobs because you met them on cool jobs right so completely like.
Speaker 2:They're like women that casually will be like. And then I was in mcmurdo in antarctica and you're like, holy, you're the coolest woman I've ever met in my life, so like I had a good base but that's where I started was honestly just bugging all my friends to be like please come on. And then it just went from there, yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of it has been from Instagram as well. Anybody that like I think is really cool on the internet, I honestly just send them a DM, slide into their DM and ask them to come on the crazy show. We do that a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, although I have learned and this is the patriarchy and I, you know, down with the patriarchy because it can burn. I usually get my female staff to go into people's DMs to try to bring them in, because a guy sliding into your DMs, even though I come with noble notions, is automatically kind of a red flag, and I get that, I totally get that, and so it is.
Speaker 1:We're at about 50 50 for women to male guests. Um, you know, we were, I think, the first, first industrial podcast of a trans guest. Um, you know, and we, we support lgbtq.
Speaker 1:We do a whole pride month of guests for the, for the, for the episodes, and it's interesting because the patriarchy also handcuffs me as a man sometimes right and not, and then like I'm not like wow, wow, because no no, but it is true, but it is true yeah it affects everyone, right, and it's like man, like if it's that hard for me to to talk to a female guest to bring a man without looking like a creepy dude sliding into dms, what's it like for a woman to try to get into a guy world like it's a million trillion times layers of bull right like completely and like, yeah, I think it's like layers of bull.
Speaker 2:But I think it's also like we talk a lot about like identity and like one thing that comes up a lot in terms of industrial is like a balance of femininity and masculinity, and I think almost all of us it like. It's very, very common. So when you first go into industrial spaces, you almost change your identity to try to be more stereotypical, masculine and you're like you're walking around almost like like a little kid at like theater camp, but you're like, I'm not wearing dad's shirt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like I'm not proving anybody like that, I'm like trying to like speak deeper, but like it's just this like almost like a, a fear-based mechanism.
Speaker 2:I think I'm just trying to be yeah, To try to like um, blend in with the surrounding and try not to be othered, and then then I think you just kind of get to a point that you're like no, no, no, I understand myself and I can have this balance between femininity. Masculinity I can present authentically how I would like to present, and but that takes time. So that aspect of patriarchy and like masculinity at site is something that we do talk about a lot and something that comes up.
Speaker 2:A lot is in terms of identity and in terms of presentation.
Speaker 1:It's super interesting because I struggled with that, and it sounds weird because I'm a dude, but I'm a weird dude, right.
Speaker 1:Like I'm a weird dude and I grew up in a household where I had gay people around me that are in my family that I love very much. I grew up in a non-religious home so my home was no religion, so I didn't have any of that stuff growing up and my parents kind of just let me fly my freak flag. However, I wanted at all times of my life and when I went into the industrial world I had to tame that right, because I was coming in with painted nails and eyeliner and a red mohawk and tattoos and piercings and everyone's like yeah, like you can't be like that. And and I did the exact same thing. You know, I did the like I'm gonna make fun of girls and talk about my truck and do the raw talk because that's the environment. And you get to a point where, like, I'm done with this, you know what I mean yeah like, either you take me or you don't take me.
Speaker 1:Like, what are you doing? On Friday I'm going to the drag show.
Speaker 3:Like that's what I'm doing, and the guys are all like oh, you like drag racing.
Speaker 1:I'm like not that kind of drag.
Speaker 2:Not that kind of drag, but also good, but also good.
Speaker 1:So, like I mean, it's a thing where because from my point of view it's about being a good ally, because I'm not a woman and I'm not going to ever try to pretend like I can understand to the depths that patriarchy can have on a woman's life and their ecosystem in society but I can try to be a better ally. That is within my realm I can do a few things. I can call out right. I can call out Like if anyone around me is being weird now in today's world, that's do a few things I can call out right. I can call out like if anyone around me is being weird now in today's world, that's not a go anymore, it's like yo stop.
Speaker 2:That's not allowed. That's so powerful though.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Thank you for doing that and that it makes you see it in their eyes, the bad guy's eyes. I've seen girls yell at a guy and they're just like I don't care because they're deep in the patriarchy when, for me, I can be like yo stop and then they pay attention to me where it's like patriarchy versus patriarchy.
Speaker 1:It's a thing where it's like all hands on deck. Right, I got a very strong mom. You know, we came to Canada as refugees. She's done an amazing job. She went back to university at 40 to get her social work. She's done all these amazing things. I got an amazing daughter. I got a great sister, like I mean so, like, for me, it seems like all these the patriarchy as it hurts women, hurts men. We are, we are excluding ourselves from beauty and understanding. That is just inherently there, but you're choosing to blind yourself to it for some reason that I cannot fathom. You know, know.
Speaker 2:Why would?
Speaker 1:we sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I was going to say like continue.
Speaker 1:Like I mean, if we had 50% welders on a job site, you know how much that would affect positively production efficiency, workplace culture, probably domestic cultures, to be able to understand people better, know, like just on a on, just on a social level. You know what I mean. I'm probably I'm ranting now, but no, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a very good rant, because I think that that's the thing with like advocacy and I think that's the thing sometimes that we also do talk about on the show. A lot is, when do you bring men into the conversation? Because we created a space that's really for women and for women's storytelling and, like women issues within culture and also joy, but it is really women focused and you're like, yes, like the patriarchy does affect us and like I say that as a white woman and it affects women of color to the net degree, right Like so there is levels to it, but like it does affect women more but it also affects men.
Speaker 2:Like it affects every single person in the system and like this issue of culture, if it's if one person is being um emotionally abused or yelled at, or if there's like really a lot of aggression that's like towards women staff, it is also probably likely happening to male staff. It is also probably likely happening to male staff.
Speaker 2:It is also probably problems of identity, like what you were talking about being like I put on this, like bravado macho guy show like problems of identity will also affect both women and men. So this idea to be like when should we bring in men into the conversation and should we create a space for everybody? Because, like again, these issues are going to have effects to everybody. For us we're just kind of we're so tiny and we're just trying to focus just on us.
Speaker 2:But I couldn't agree more with this conversation of being like that. It affects men as well, like all of these same issues in industrial settings. Affects everybody, it's.
Speaker 1:It is toxic, it can be corrected Completely it is toxic and can be corrected Completely.
Speaker 2:It is toxic and can be corrected. And I also think that we're missing so much joy but also so much productivity. The data always shows if you have higher diversity, you have higher productivity, you have a better output. I think that we're also men are missing a community setting. I think that's what women are very, very good at doing is because I think we've had to is create kind of community. Especially when you're like one of two or one of four, it matters more because it's harder to get.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, and this is coming for me from a very fresh learning experience I had. Last week I was in Nashville for four days at the Association for Women in Metal Industries, an all female, all all-national, not-for-profit organization that is only for women and it's like, supports women in the metal industries at all tiers, right From, like junior apprentices to CEOs, and this is a room of like the you know, some of the biggest hitters in industry period who happen to be women as well, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is an environment for me as a male to come to this environment. We're a corporate sponsor. I brought our company into sponsor them corporately. I brought my staff. I brought some women down from my staff to experience and learn as a learning um place and for me to learn because in that environment I'm the shut up guy right like yeah, you know if I go to say something, they're like and I'm like, yeah, right, Okay.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 1:Not my space, right? I get it right, Because you're not here to listen to me, You're listening here to listen to each other and I'm just here to shut up and listen and learn. Right? Coming out of that conference, I realized that, even from a KPI level, because I do have that part of my brain they had 2,300 members in all of the US and they had 480 people at their conference.
Speaker 1:That's like a one in five, one in four ratio of members to attendance. I told them I would die for that ratio. Because you know what, guys? Because we are the patriarchy. Any one of our associations has 40 000 members, 60 000 members, 100 000 members, but then you throw an event. How many show up?
Speaker 1:100, maybe 80 right because, because we don't care, we don't have to go, we don't need to feel that community. We own the community. We don't need to find that connection. I can get it tomorrow at work yeah I can get it at the football game. I can get it to car dealership, I can get it anywhere but and and that reduces my ratio of what's the word of engagement yeah but this female organization, their engagement is through the roof right and and that's you know. You know where I'm going with it.
Speaker 2:So it's like it's amazing how that community is so strong, but kind of through necessity right completely like it comes from necessity, and I think it just because of necessity, because you're like dying to have community, like you can almost see it happen if you go to work if you like, are at an industrial setting and there's two women, you will see that they will instantly grab each other like coffee, lunch, everything to be like, even if it's a different department, different, different section, like it's instantly.
Speaker 2:You need that community, You're like craving it, You're trying to find it everywhere. And I think because you've been trying to find community, you've also developed the skills of organization and community organization. So, for instance, I was at a construction event last night. I had never met anybody there. I think there was like 150 people. I was by myself going through. I instantly met like 50 people and that's not because I'm like the best networker.
Speaker 2:I was like uncomfortable and being like okay, this is like as you are when you're like one person at a conference and you don't know any people, but all the other women in that area are all community organizers and they are all working to try to increase.
Speaker 1:They saw you and they're like, you're coming with us, like.
Speaker 2:I just got pulled into so many conversations. They'd be, like that's a new recruit. For our organization.
Speaker 3:That's something we don't know yet we're going to get her in.
Speaker 2:We're going to get her contact information.
Speaker 3:We're going to go for coffee.
Speaker 2:Those skills kind of build up as well. But I do think that you're right that it comes from a necessity and a love and a need for community. But I think that that's really missing and I would love for men to experience that as well, because I feel like they would love it. It's fantastic to like meet new people.
Speaker 1:I think the cis white male has it the worst, honestly, because you know as hard it is for the queer community. You can see when they see each other and they hang with each other, the love and safety they bring to each other. You know, I'm an immigrant from south america, political refugee. I have that connection. When I I run into someone who can speak spanish, I'm in, I'm in like we're friends.
Speaker 1:You have no choice now because I get to speak, speak in my mother tongue and and you know, and if I and it's rare, but when I do come across another political exile, we have a lot in common. We can, we can have that, we can have the dark talk that I can't have with just anyone, because only certain people that have shared certain experiences will understand that from another person. So, and and that I think translates to what you're talking about too is is I can talk about certain things to my friends, to my wife, to my, you know, to the people around me, but there's certain things that they won't get because they have zero context for right completely.
Speaker 2:And then because I have zero context, for it doesn't have the same power and it also feels very different when you're telling that story it doesn't feel nice to be vulnerable like it feels a and so that again like goes back to when we were getting those questions from people outside of industry to be like how terrible is it? That's why we were like we really need to kind of control this narrative and this needs to be an inter-community.
Speaker 2:If we want to go there, great, but it needs to be done respectfully, I think and like done with integrity, and not to say that there was no integrity or militia in those other people asking those questions. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Again, they come from good places, but they just don't understand it, and I think that lack of understanding dilutes the conversation, but yeah, yeah, now the other piece of this puzzle is your workwear line, which I saw that as a that's kind of a tangent Like. I mean I see the direct connection with your industry experience and your sister's industry experience. I have witnessed firsthand in industry for 30 years women's struggle and even, you know, danger of wearing improper safety equipment, and then as an instructor we actually had an incident once where a woman got quite burned badly because of improper female fitting safety equipment. So I totally understand the need for it. But how the heck did you get?
Speaker 3:in on that.
Speaker 1:I didn't hear any part of this seamstress, any part of this materials or fashion or clothing.
Speaker 3:So what happened?
Speaker 2:It's funny because I actually come from it from a different perspective, because I've always been interested in clothes, but not a seamstress cannot sew. My gram, who I um peggy workwear, is um named after my 100 year old grandmother, peggy.
Speaker 2:She did all of my sewing because I got short for pegasus or I wish honestly I would try to call her that and she would disown me like I would not be allowed into her house for so like I will never say that word in front of her ever again. Her name is um vivian and she is like a strong woman like you will not call her years old.
Speaker 1:She's doing some right, man.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she is like she's got there from, like stubbornness of just being like no one's to tell me what to do. Like I am. But, anyways, I tried to learn how to sew. She kicked me off like within two seconds. She was like no, no, no.
Speaker 3:You. This is not for you.
Speaker 2:This is wrong, but I've always loved clothes, I've always loved design and my background. Actually, way back in the day before I decided to do sciences, I actually had a full ride to art school and to like graphic design and okay, yeah and so my background has always been in art. Really okay is how I started. Um, I did not go that route because I was in like grade 11 and I had a recruiter being like drop out of high school and my dad was like I will what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:you have to at least graduate high school again, trade school university yeah, one or the two, but like there's no way here that you're dropping out.
Speaker 2:So um, but that's where, like, the love of design comes from. Is comes from an art background and then the necessity, so like an obsession with clothes, a love of design and then I think again is just slowly built of just like necessity and annoyance, the same way that Smoka was built of like, of building this advocacy, of building this passion for like telling other people's stories and like having these conversations, same same with clothes. So it was like every single time I had a pair of Carhartts rip and like show my butt to like everybody on the drill floor, I was like I never want that to happen again.
Speaker 2:I'm like one of four men and I just showed everybody everything because I had a seam rip. Like that's absolutely ridiculous. I only have two pairs of pants because I'm in the middle of the ocean. Like what am I going to do for the rest of the 60 days?
Speaker 1:No, so blue Like it was just, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So that was one aspect of it, of just like personal failure of clothes, seeing all my friends and all the women around me um mending clothes and altering clothes, like in the middle of the chemistry lab you'd have the one person that could sew, that would like make everybody's pants a couple inches shorter, and just like bring things in and make them actually fit. I had a couple of scary instances in like confined spaces where I was like snagged.
Speaker 2:Stuck in clothes, yeah, I'm already a little bit claustrophobic. I'm honestly not really comfortable going in confined spaces. I will if I have to, but like don't love it and then I got snagged and I was like never again this is terrible andrea had the same thing. She's been like up in fire many times I have a couple girlfriends that have lost thumbs from like ice augers and gloves that are like poorly too long and yeah, poorly, poorly like it was just all of these series of things.
Speaker 2:Again, it's like it's the same, like build right and. But even for me it was something that I thought was going to be a pipe dream, like I was like.
Speaker 2:I have this crazy idea. I don't have the skill set because I'm not a seamstress, so am I even crazy to have this idea, like I really thought it was going to be a pipe dream. And then I think just what happened is it was it kind of was building and building and building, and then being like you can't not do it. You've been thinking about it now for six years.
Speaker 3:What are you going to do? Put?
Speaker 1:a lot of thought into this. Yeah, this is going to be like 20 years of that.
Speaker 2:You're just going to think like woulda, shoulda, coulda, and you're not going to try it, like you might as well try it, and it hit to a point too, as well. As like working in geology, even though I love it, especially working maritime. It's fantastic when you're you're younger. But as I got older I was like, well, I would eventually like to have my family and like I can't have a child. And then be like, okay, see you later. I'm going to go for two months to see like you're good, you're on your own Right. So, like it also kind of was coming to the perfect timing of like personally on a personal factor, of being like it's time to be in one place, it's time to have a switch in career a little bit, to be less field focused. You've had this crazy idea for years and years. Everything has been building. Why not try it out?
Speaker 1:Good timing yeah.
Speaker 2:The timing is now. Everything's kind of telling you that this is working right now, Try it out. And so I went back to school. I got a business degree because I was like I know nothing about business, so I went back got a business degree.
Speaker 2:While I was doing my business degree, I started writing the business plan and I went through kind of those channels of starting the company and then I started interviewing women and that kind of data, of interviewing everybody and being like what do you need? What's working, what's not working? It solidified the idea of being like okay, this is really necessary. And then from that, um, we designed like a from scratch um collection and what we did is we again like the thing with workwear what doesn't work is like it doesn't fit on thighs, hips, butts, um, and waist is like the like problem and if it doesn't fit you, it's not going to function.
Speaker 2:And because, we do such technical and like labor intensive jobs. If it doesn't function, you're not going to be able to do your job one and you're also going to be doing your job extremely unsafely.
Speaker 2:And because of that like you're not going to feel like yourself, you're going to have that identity piece that we've talked about that's going to be missing, because you're going to really feel awkward and uncomfortable in your skin. You really feel awkward and uncomfortable in your skin. You're also going to be at risk of safety accidents or safety incidents, sorry. And then it's just it doesn't work, it's going to fail. So what we did is we designed based on a size 12 to 14, which is different than industry. Usually people start at like a size two and they design their clothes, and we designed on a size 12, 14, and then scaled up and down from that and we really just like workshopped it and we like treated it like a science experiment. Honestly, it was just like me and my best friend high kicking in our, in our protocols, and like running up and down ladders to be like, okay, like what's working, like try to jump as fast as you can, try to do as many deep squats get as low as you can without ripping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah try to put like as much tools into this right like, and then from that we also took like a scientific perspective in terms of um fabric. So our fabric is a huge win and it is a custom blend of fabric. But what we did is we put in a nylon component, because nylon is like stretching times. No, no, it's not stretchy it, it's so, so, so durable. It's like 10 times harder than cotton. So, like you know, our Carhartts like and like heavy duck cotton it feels really heavy when you're wearing it, you don't have that heaviness, it almost feels really light Like you feel?
Speaker 2:like you're wearing like a mid-weight pant, but it's like basically like Kevlar, like it's crazy durable and they can withstand almost everything because of that nylon component. So that was something that was really really important to us was fit, function, and that was just chaotic testing, which was the highlight of my day, to be like put as many rocks in the pocket and run around the block and see what works. And that was based on data and based on interviews, and again I just went really nerdy with it while I created this company. But then the like other aspect was like OK, fit, function, durability with our custom fabric. And then we're really going to try to make our garments like breathable and comfortable, because that is what is important. We are working like shift work for like 14 hour days. We're not going to be wearing starchy pants or starchy overalls, like let's make something that looks good, feels good and actually works. And so that was the crazy pipe dream of Peggy Workwear we launched last March, so we have not been around for that long and it's just been like last March, like a year and a half ago, or last March, six months ago six months ago like like six months ago it is like very, very new
Speaker 2:um, but what's been really beautiful from that is it kind of was just a hit. Like people were like instantly, like these are the best pants ever and like I'm like I didn't even pay you to say that and they're like, yeah, we love the pants and like that was just something that was just so beautiful to see and just like such a like a relief and just like, honestly, that makes it so worthwhile, just being like the community loves it, they're using it. It's like helping them through their day. If there's somebody out there that's like welding or that's like in potash mining that are wearing their clothes and they're actually helping them throughout their day. Like that's all that we want. All that we want is just to try to like increase representation of women in trades um, uh, women in trades and STEM and like from that part of it storytelling, a big part of it is also workwear and it's something that, like we haven't really talked yet.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm like ranting for a million miles but like another aspect of workwear is it is we kind of view it one from a necessity and one from like a build. But like we also view it as a lever of inclusion because at the end of the day, like when you get to a work site this happened to me early in my career when you get to a work site and they're like you know what? We have all of these uniforms. The one that was a huge probably honestly why I started the company was I was building an ice road up in Northern Ontario and we were in the Mustang survival suits and they were handing them out and they're like if you fall into the ice, don't worry, you're going to survive because you're wearing these Mustang survival suits. They're like we don't have anything for women, we only have men's.
Speaker 2:Large and extra large. My knees I'm five, five and a half. Like I am a petite woman my the knees of that went down to my ankles. Like I literally had to grab like the crop. Like I had to pull up all of this fabric and waddle. Like I had to pull up all of this fabric and waddle. And I looked at my supervisor like dead in the eye and I was like if I fall into the lake, do you think I'm going to live? And they're like no, not, not you, everybody else is fine.
Speaker 2:You're definitely dead.
Speaker 1:There's no way like that is going to like drag you to the very bottom, yeah.
Speaker 2:That is the bottom of the lake for you, and I think that like even though it's funny, that feeling of being like, okay, you're comfortable protecting 98% of your staff, but the other 2%, like we're not even supposed to be here.
Speaker 1:So you're like, yeah, I don't know how you guys snuck in and we're trying to make that a 50-50. What's going to happen then? Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you guys snuck in, like you guys are kind of on your own, sort it out, and like that's how it feels in terms of like again, we're already stuck like struggling with, like hey, is this environment made for us? And then they're like yeah, we also don't have any safety gear and like good luck out there on that ice road yeah, and good luck finding a bathroom, you know yeah, like it doesn't feel very inclusive. So work we're at it's like fundamental is part of increasing inclusion and just like feeling like you belong.
Speaker 1:So now in terms of like, because this is a welding show.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, no, this is, this is very much related to where you're going because we have and especially like I mean not not just on the show We've had other workwear companies on the show. They've interviewed and you can go scope out their interviews if you want Learn something. But in my 30 years of welding, the one thing that always comes up, whether it's men or women, for when it comes to welding stuff, is it FR. And we have worked I'm talking about the CWB Association. Since I've taken over, I have actively looked for a partner in workwear for women that is, frcsa approved clothing, and we have not been able to do that. Is that you know? I know your sister's a welder. Is that on the agenda? Have you already started that path? Because that seems to be an obstacle that really halts a lot of the producers no, it's definitely again.
Speaker 2:Um, my family would disown me and I would not be allowed home if I was not thinking about welding gear both andrea, like there's actually no way.
Speaker 2:we started with um non-fr and we started just with one pant, like again, we've only been a company for six months, so we're so new, but that's something that's on um, on top of mind of like our collection and being like okay, we have to make something for hot work. Um, I think what does what is a limit? I think and I can speak for myself here, um, and maybe not speak for others but I think what can be daunting a little bit is from a regulatory point of view and from a certification point of view and trying to navigate that as a small company, because I think that's when it just becomes a little bit more complicated on the supply chain and a little bit more complicated, a little more bureaucracy involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and testing and also talking to the government, which is pretty slow and can be very slow if you're like a one-of-one person, but that's not an excuse like we're gonna get there. It's on the agenda again. My sister, and like a co-founder, is a red sail welder. We're not gonna make that she can't use right. So we're gonna eventually bring that up, but we started as general just because it was the easiest to do in terms of materials.
Speaker 1:Well, you got to figure out design too and all those other pieces, right?
Speaker 2:Completely, and if we can get it right on a general workwear, on a general pant, we're going to be able to get it right on an FR garment right. So if we have the design, if we have the pattern done correctly, we're going to be able to get there. The pattern done correctly, we're going to be able to get there. It's just. I think what is hard in terms of going for a collection is talking to the government and making sure all of your materials are adequately tested and actually certified right, because the other thing that we don't want to do is we don't want to produce a garment that fails certification, or you never want to produce something that, like all of a sudden, you're like isn't actually fr yeah I I know a couple and that's a sliding scale too, because fr is not fr forever.
Speaker 2:It's only fr the day you take it out of the package, right like completely and like andrea has so many products that like are marketed as welding garments and they'll catch on fire. Yeah, they.
Speaker 1:They're not FR at all.
Speaker 2:They're not FR and like and not something that, like as a company, we would never stand for. So like if we're going to do it. We're going to do it like.
Speaker 3:For real, perfect, like we're going to do it for real.
Speaker 2:So we're going to get there for sure. It's something that we're like aspiring to do again. I would be disowned, but, um, it's just not at this moment.
Speaker 1:What about gloves? Leather gloves? That's a big one for barrier for women in the in the steel industry. Is finding leather gauntlet style gloves that are, you know, in the right sizes for women on the radar, not on the radar done already?
Speaker 2:On the radar. But in the same batch of like, when we do FR, we'll do it the whole thing. You know what I mean when we do fr, we'll do it the whole thing.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like we'll, we'll get one collection of the welder's kit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah like, so we're gonna kind of do it. In that type of collection, status is how we're thinking of it to be like okay, let's do our general collection, let's do our fr collection, let's go from there, right, right, but FR is like very, very close, like it is our next one.
Speaker 1:Well, let me know how we can help you. You know, like we know, some people at CSA.
Speaker 2:Okay, I will take you up on that One thousand percent.
Speaker 1:Well, we've actually helped any company that's come to us to say what are the standards, because we are a part of that CSA process. The W178.2 is the code for FR right, and you know so that information is public knowledge. But it's not easy to find federal stuff Like even though it's public knowledge. You got to know where to look right. So I mean absolutely reach out and we'd love to get you there. Okay.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, for you know we're getting close to the end of the show here. Yeah, look, it's been an hour and a half.
Speaker 2:We're rocking and rolling here, we're just chatting. We're yaffers, two yaffers honestly have met up.
Speaker 1:For what do you see for? First of all, for the future of your podcast. You know, where do you see it in a year from now? Is this like? Is this going to be the forever, or is this going to be just a thing for a while? I mean, I'm struggling with that and my podcast is doing well, keeps growing, but I also have a company to run. So it's like you know it's hard to find that balance because podcasts take time yeah, they do.
Speaker 2:They do take time, I think, for for me I think it's just too important, like I, I'm too like sentimental with it like. I think every single time that I'm like okay, this is a lot of work and like is it having impact? Are we just having the same conversation? If I ever start to have just like, I think, very normal self-doubt, then all of a sudden, like it's almost like the next guest?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll get like a comment from like.
Speaker 2:I think I got a comment on YouTube recently and he was like I'm like a 65 year old man. I've never met like a female driller. This is the first person that I ever knew was a female driller. Thank you so much for like, and it's just that that connection is instantly like.
Speaker 3:I'm like.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this forever, Like it doesn't matter, we'll do this forever, like for you, we're watching it wherever you watched it. For you to like then take your time and write out a beautiful, heartfelt message and like that just means the world. So I think, from that side, I think I'm always gonna do this, because I think yeah every single time I have a message and I'm like okay, well, see you later and how do people find your podcast?
Speaker 2:um, we are kind of on everywhere, but um, spotify and apple is like the big ones. I think that's where most people are also on YouTube. If you are a YouTube person, we are on YouTube and we also have a website. That makes it easy if you would like to listen to it from a website. I'm a big Spotify gal myself, so that's where I listen to it, but our website is wwwsmokopodcastca.
Speaker 1:Smoko S-M-O-K-O.
Speaker 2:Yes, from. Like the Australianralian smoke break, which is what we were calling, all of our smoke breaks up in the maritime industry.
Speaker 1:It's like go take a smoker.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, yeah it was honestly, it's like everyone go take a smoke, go like yeah speak some and just like hang out, and so that's the idea, smokers.
Speaker 1:Corners is where you make friends, man.
Speaker 3:It really is.
Speaker 1:Alright, now the next piece of the puzzle Peggy, the Peggy's Workwear. How do people find that? How do they do it? How does it work? Who do you want? Everybody.
Speaker 2:Honestly, everybody, please give us a shout out. Am I allowed to do a very shameless plug?
Speaker 1:Is that allowed? Plug away.
Speaker 2:One thing. So we are available, obviously, on PeggyWorkwearca wwwpeggyworkwearca. We are also on Instagram. We also have a hello at Peggy Workwear, so please drop us an email if you'd like to. My email is also armstrong at peggyworkwearca, so please also feel free to send an email my way. But we are also looking at if anybody would like to partner. Currently that's where we're kind of at right now. So if anyone is in need of outfitting their crew, if you need bulk sales, if you have a retail location and you're like, oh my goodness, the women in my community would love to have access to workwear, that's kind of where we would love to go. And so, as a shameless plug, if that's you on the other side of this, please feel free to send us a message. But, um, from just checking us out, instagram or our website is kind of the place to be.
Speaker 1:Awesome and so, for all the people that are following along, we know you're listening. We got people in big companies out there shipyards, mining companies, nuclear industries there's a lot of companies that are a part of the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, reach out to Alexis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you need gear, I'll get you gear For your women for your women I mean dudes can wear it too. I assume 1,000%. Yeah, if you want to.
Speaker 2:Honestly my partner and my dad. They rock our T-shirts every single day Awesome.
Speaker 1:And then the last piece is you know you. You know, because you are now entering into this world of entrepreneurialism and self. You know, you know your journey of self-discovery. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Self-discovery, where, where do you see yourself in the next five years? Like, I mean, you've started a couple big projects now, but you know it's tough to uh, to stop creating once you become a creator.
Speaker 2:I think, um, and maybe this is just like total stubbornness, I'd be like I will not stop creating. Like, what are you talking?
Speaker 1:about like I was like I.
Speaker 2:I'm going to keep going, but, um, I think where I'd like to see Peggy work where and see myself is like it would just be an honor to have more people. I think, um, along the journey and having. We're really lucky right now that we have a couple of employees, which is absolutely fantastic, and has been a blessing and a surprise at this stage.
Speaker 2:But, um, but that's where I kind of see us going. It would be lovely to have a retail location. It would be lovely to honestly just expand and, I think, just be open to creating new things. And I think part of being a creator I think one, I have some ideas, but I think my best ideas come from other people.
Speaker 2:It's like bringing more people onto the team and like really expanding it and hearing what does a brand mean, what does our brand mean to somebody else? And then what can they bring to this kind of like new version of Peggy 2.0 and where can we expand it? And maybe places that we don't even know yet. Right, right, like there might be an avenue or something, another big project or a collaboration or who knows right, um, that might come up completely left field and be like, hey, do you want to do this? And be like, yeah, why not?
Speaker 2:let's be open to it, yeah as we kind of grow and expand and I think, um, not that you lose your brand, but I think you just expand it to have more people into it and to like what that means for more people and that's where I'm really excited to go is just bring in more people.
Speaker 1:And yeah, if your brand isn't built for growth, it's not going to do well.
Speaker 2:Completely Like it has to.
Speaker 1:I mean it's kind of that's a component that should be there from day one Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it should really just change and evolve, and I think that's what I'm really excited for. I don't think I have a um, like a stuck position of being like that's what the evolution is going to look like who knows Right, but um, I just want the evolution to happen. I think that's what I'm excited about for the next five years.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and and and I actually I got one more question I lied to you One more, one more Cause I'm curious.
Speaker 2:No one more question. I lied to you One more, one more Because I'm curious.
Speaker 1:I'm a yapper, I'm going to be here all day In terms of your advocacy work, you know, aside from the businesses, is there any things that you do or you're a part of or you'd like to let people know of in terms of, you know, advocating for women in the industries?
Speaker 2:Oh, um.
Speaker 1:Like you mentioned a couple of things that you've been through recently. You know, like there's, is there any agencies that perhaps aren't aren't on our radar that are doing great work?
Speaker 2:like wants community and is in their area is, I think, just find one. All you have to do is like find like one women in trades group and then go to who they're following, go to who they're talking to, who are they friends with, and then that will kind of explode your network. So that's an advice of somebody listening, of where they want to do for some community. But the people that there's so many, I mean V the island, the um vancouver island construction association, they're incredible. Bcc wit is a local one they're fantastic they're incredible.
Speaker 2:Bc trades equity is also. I'm obsessed with them. Um, but women on site is a partner. We give a percentage of sales to women we work with them too yeah, they're incredible. They're based in ontario but they have chapters now 11 of them across canada. Um, owa is also huge fans of owa. Um, who else am I obsessed with? We were just down with reinvented, that's a science one. Um, they are, uh, and if anyone's like a teaching position, they are the first like printed magazine for young girls in STEM.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And they do a printed because for low income areas where they don't have access to internet into computers, so they have like printed magazine. They're pretty incredible.
Speaker 1:I just thought of something that.
Speaker 3:I yeah.
Speaker 1:I was at that women's conference last week and a kid's book on your. Oh, it doesn't show up on, the stupid thing. But, it's Adriana Tours a Steel Mill. It's a kid's book for touring a steel mill for children. I love that. I love this so much. I'm going to reach out to the author and I want to include this in my like national, you know books that we sent out to industry, because that is the type of stuff that we need.
Speaker 2:We need to get kids to have it on their radar and I will say, like this is a plug for reinvented, because what they do, I think is so brilliant, is one is the like printed magazine that's there, like they send that all over the world, but like mostly to schools and to organizations. But they also do a program called princess with power tools and that is where, like all of these stem women dress up as Disney princesses and then obviously like little girls, are like oh my god, I want to go hang out with Ariel. And they're like Ariel happens to have a nail gun.
Speaker 1:I'm going to learn how to use a nail gun. Today we're building a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, like Ariel is, using the nail gun, and so it's that, that like talking to kids. And then, on that aspect, the who I also love, um Blythe, she's down in Texas. She is incredible, she's girl with grit. Um, we're going to do a couple events in March which I'm really excited about. She does workshops that teach young um girls and young women, trades programs and kind of like trade workshops. She does a bunch of different trades. She starts mostly, I think, in carpentry but she kind of does a little bit of everything. Um, and she holds these seminar workshops all across the United States and so she is doing incredible work. Like I think she just got a grant with the state of Texas and is doing a bunch of work down in Texas. But again, like Colorado, she wants to come up to Canada as well and so, like fingers crossed that she. I would love to do something with her up here as well. But that's Girl With Grit. Who's?
Speaker 3:another incredible organization.
Speaker 1:When does she want to come to Canada? You know we host a couple big conferences every year. You know Honestly she'll come. I think she would say yes, we're always looking for some talent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like she's incredible, she's just like a wonderful person. She's so down to earth, what she's doing has so much impact, um, and I think there's been like hundreds of young girls that she's opened their minds up to being a woman in trades like it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, this has been uh amazing, entertaining and eye-opening and educational hour and a half I've had with you, alexis. I hope you've had as much fun on the show as. I have.
Speaker 2:This was like, honestly, the highlight of my day. Thank you so much. Like. This was so much fun. It felt like I can't believe it was like an hour and a half. It felt like nothing. Thank you for being so lovely and I just love. From the very beginning, when you were like I'm a nerd and I know exactly how geology and sedimentology works, I was like, oh, this is about to be the best part of my day. This is incredible. So, thank you, this is a joy.
Speaker 1:You bet Well, thank you very much and for all the people that have been following, we will be sharing the links. So anything that you give, send us and give us, we can put it up on the on the write-ups and we can make sure that all of it gets sent out to our fan base, Cause we also are on all the podcast networks and on YouTube, so we can do some cross promotions there. And if you ever need any guests for your show not me, but I have great staff who are in the trades that are always looking.
Speaker 1:I love them telling their stories too, because I get inspired by the people that work with me too and how great they are. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:That would be an honour. Yeah, no, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you so much.
Speaker 1:that would be an honor, yeah no, thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you, and it would be an honor to speak with them. Alright, perfect, hopefully they don't bad mouth me too much.
Speaker 2:Actually, max is the worst boss I ever had, you know we'll edit it out, don't worry this interview was only three seconds long, for some reason, whatever the rest of it was just F-bombs Like who the f*** is that guy?
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you, and for all the people that have been following and helping us, remember to check out our recently released 200th episode in which my staff interview me, which is always pretty fun, and then we just got back from Nashville we're going to be releasing those podcasts that we interviewed with the wonderful women down from the Association of Women in the Metal Industries. So the Roadshow is going to be releasing those podcasts over the next couple months. So keep following, downloading, sharing and commenting, and, on our website, of course, you can always send us a DM or a message if you have any ideas or you would like to hear or learn or just ask us anything. Love to have you and, until then, take care. Until the next episode, I'll see you there. We hope you enjoyed the show.
Speaker 3:You've been listening to the CWB Association Welding Podcast with Max Serrano. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the CWB Group and presented by Max Serron, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.