The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Skills Canada Series -Season 3 - Episode 3 with Carole Ann Ryan
The CWB Association is thrilled to collaborate with Skills/Compétences Canada on a special podcast series. This year, we are excited to interview the Skills Canada Executive Directors from across Canada. Tune in as we explore their skills journey and commitment to promoting skilled trades in their provinces and territories!
Carol Ann Ryan's journey with Skills Canada began with a newspaper ad and transformed into a 27-year passion project that has revolutionized how Newfoundland and Labrador approaches trades education. As the founding Executive Director, she arrived with no knowledge of skilled trades but quickly built an organization that would send 83 competitors to the Skills Canada National Skills Competition just weeks after she started. What makes Newfoundland's Skills program distinctive is their pioneering approach to early exposure. Recognizing that career attitudes form before high school, they implemented junior high competitions nearly 26 years ago—starting as young as grade six.
Website: https://skillscanadanl.ca/
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Website: https://www.skillscompetencescanada.com/en/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/skills_canada
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skillscanada
There is no better time to be a member! The CWB Association membership is new, improved, and focused on you. We offer a FREE membership with a full suite of benefits to build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/become-a-member
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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. Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Duran and I'm here for our wonderful week of Skills Canada Competitions Edition Skills Podcast. So this week what we're doing is we're recording interviews with the executive directors of all the different provinces and territories across Canada. Try to get the vibe of the differences between the provinces, what they bring to the table and how excited they are to be here in Regina for the competition. Right now I have Carol Ann Ryan, who's the executive director for Newfoundland Labrador. Hi, good morning. Do you go by, carol or Carol Ann?
Speaker 2:Carol Ann, but I will answer to anything as long as you're friendly to me. I am friendly and we're good All right, Caroline.
Speaker 1:So what are your first impressions of Regina and Skills so far?
Speaker 2:Well, Regina, I've actually never been to Regina before. We've hosted the National in Saskatchewan before, but not in Regina. So, it's a beautiful city. I'm really enjoying the visit, our kids are having a great time here and, of course, skills without fail. This is always my absolute favorite event week of the year.
Speaker 1:In every single way. There's nothing better.
Speaker 2:Oh listen, that makes it all the more because the more nervous people are, the more nervous the kids are, the students are the post-secondary students the more it means to them. And to be part of something that means so much to people and so many and impacts so many lives is a complete gift.
Speaker 1:It is, it is so how long have you been in the role as executive director?
Speaker 2:I've been here for 27 years. Oh my God yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the record of all the interviews. I had a 20 year mark this morning, yeah.
Speaker 2:I actually was the first I started it in.
Speaker 1:Newfoundland and.
Speaker 2:Labrador in 1998. So I had a sentence that skilled trades and technologies are first choice options for young Canadians.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was the vision, that was it.
Speaker 2:And I had the absolute joy and privilege and freedom of creating. You know programming to meet that need and it's been the joy of my life.
Speaker 1:So how did you get into that spot? Because there's a couple different routes. Generally, you're either from a trades background or you're from some type of business background. What was your background? That got you in the skills world. Well, young people listening wouldn't know what I'm talking about, but I saw an ad in the paper and I applied.
Speaker 2:And I am actually the poster child for people who needed something like Skills Canada because I knew nothing. I knew nothing about trades, I knew nothing about technologies. I had done you know, I had gone from high school straight into post secondary university. I knew nothing about any other stream or path and when I saw the ad.
Speaker 2:I was working. I had the ad, I was working, I had just graduated and I was working at the Board of Trade coordinating programs. So again, I saw the ad in the paper and applied blindly and it just seemed like the most exciting thing in the world to build something. Yeah, and like what a learning experience. An eye-opening experience it was for me when I realized so many incredible career paths that I knew nothing about and so many of my friends had no idea that these options were there.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I applied and I got the job. And here we are. I took it for one year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with that one year contract.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I took a one year contract and I really meant it. I was only doing it for a year because my partner at the time was finishing up at school and he had taken a contract in Ottawa for one year. So I said I'm going to do this for one year and then I'm going to move to Ottawa. Oh no.
Speaker 1:A new job, old partner.
Speaker 2:No, well, it's funny, and I mean I, I, I messaged my, my now husband and said um bad news. I love it yeah, I don't think I can move to ottawa, and he's a an angel. So he said, okay, I'll move home yeah, and that was it.
Speaker 1:Here we are, 27 years later so if you were the first yep and you're coming in on a job posting for like hey, we got this thing, you're kind of way behind the eight ball compared to other provinces who got funding and sponsors and programs and even just the confidence of being a part of these existing systems, how did you start dipping your finger into that pool?
Speaker 2:So it was a very quick. I'm not sure if you know how all of the provinces and territories came on, because pre-1998, there was I believe it was, you know Quebec, alberta, manitoba and Ontario. I believe that had Skills Canada organizations and Canada put in a bid to host the World in 1999., so the federal government said, hey, we should get a little bit of seed funding to every province and territory to at least be able to participate in that. So, that's how we all came on stream in 1998.
Speaker 2:So you know, when we started we had a little bit of seed money to bring a team to the National or yeah, to the Nationals in Vancouver in 98. So I started in first week of May and three weeks later we brought a team to the Nationals.
Speaker 1:How, how did you do that?
Speaker 2:I actually passed out there. But I mean the thing is that the beauty of Skills Canada is it's such a simple but perfect idea, and you know, the key to our success, as usual, is finding the passionate volunteers and the partners who understand the power. So you know, first, when I started, the initial urgency was just to get a team together, and we did. We brought something ridiculous like 83 competitors to Vancouver. How did you get so many together so?
Speaker 2:fast I called a lot of people Called a lot of people worked with every single school, every campus in the province, and it just came together quickly. And then, when we returned, is then really the okay? Now what do we do? How do we build this? So you know, my approach was just to go. I built a board of directors, started inviting people from all the different educational institutions, all the different industry sectors, people. You know different levels of government.
Speaker 2:Even vendors and sponsors, absolutely Just build a board of people who are interested and we were just very fortunate that and again, I really I can't take too much credit for the brilliance of what this is. You know, you bring together experts who want to share their passion with the next generation and as long as you can find those champions, as long as you can find those people who are, they're really the ones that build this. All of those NTCs are PTCs, are judges, and when you tell them what the opportunity is, they want to be involved. So that was my experience and, like I said, it was a joy because I had no idea, I didn't have contacts, I didn't know anybody in trades, I just didn't know the system you didn't know.
Speaker 2:Nope, had no idea, and I think that's one of the beautiful things when you can acknowledge how little you know about something, when you can acknowledge how little you know about something. That's right, and the key to success is always finding the experts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and people love to share. Don't reinvent the wheel, don't try to do this. Bring the people in that know.
Speaker 2:Nope, and so we were very fortunate. Our school system was very interested and excited in supporting it. Our local industry, all of the levels of government were in right from the start.
Speaker 1:So we've had a lot of success in building programs that are meaningful in our region in addition to competitions. Yeah, now for yourself. You know, when you look at newfoundland labrador, I'm in the west. There's been a a concept for forever, since I was a kid, that the maritimes was like a have-not area. And you know, we always out west had the Newfoundlanders coming in, the East Coasters coming in to work for shutdowns and summer work, and I think it was a wrong conception that there was no work in the east and that if you wanted to make money, if you wanted to have a career, you had to go somewhere else. Now, how important is skills in reestablishing the concept that you can stay in Newfoundland and have a successful career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, there's always going to be ebbs and flows in industry and a lot of, you know a lot of people enjoy the mobility that Red Seal a of a lopsided deal that we had for many years.
Speaker 1:That's now going to bring so many people home coming back in like it's a huge time, and we are going to need a lot of skilled well, everyone is, and this is such a stumbling block right now for employers. Right Now, do you use that leverage to get employers on board with skills?
Speaker 2:To say like, look, get involved and then you get the pick of the crop I mean you are literally having the opportunity to see the best in the province, the best in Canada, and cherry pick your workforce.
Speaker 2:If you want a skilled workforce and we all know that nothing affects the bottom line, nothing affects, um, you know, the productivity of whether it's government or industry then the level of skill of your employees, and the number one resource should be the skill of your employees, absolutely and I mean, what better way than to come and see the literal best of canada, and not just people who are highly skilled, because obviously that's important and they have excellent training and they have excellent, excellent, you know abilities, but the resilience and the the strength of character it takes to be in this environment and even just show up here yeah says a lot about who that person will be as an employee, what kind of pride they take, and you know how, how they're going to contribute to your bottom line.
Speaker 2:So I honestly and truly think that any employer who's not coming to this they are missing out, some people you know throughout the years I think it's a little bit different in the last number of years, but many years people would say that we're the canada's best kept secret yeah, right and I agree to with that to some extent, because you know I'm saying this as someone who that the passion has never diminished. I only see it getting better every single year.
Speaker 1:The need is still there and, uh, employers really, really need to be at the table here yeah, and I think people don't realize also because maybe they've never been but newfoundland, labrador are not easily as easily accessible as some people think. They think oh you can go to nova scotia and just jump over to newfoundland. It's not quite that easy yeah, so do you find that there's a little bit of an isolation issue with the province you?
Speaker 2:know, one of the challenges we have, as you know, a program organization specifically is that we are a small population but we are a very big geography, with a lot of transportation challenges. It actually costs more for me to fly to Labrador, which is part of my province, than it would to Vancouver. Wow, Right, so you know, we have a lot of challenges there and one of the things well, one of the things actually that COVID, we tried to find the silver lining in things.
Speaker 2:You know, it really helped us find ways to do a lot of things virtually and digitally.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Now, there will never, never, ever, in my opinion replace the hands-on the tangible, the tool in your hand or the face-to-face. You know networking you'll never replace that, but we do have tools now at our disposal to try and bridge some of those remote areas.
Speaker 1:Right, because you look at provinces. Well, I'm in saskatchewan. We're a very big province, very small population. The northern area is very underfunded, under resourced and so, like you said, the virtual tools help you open to another audience. Perhaps it's not ideal, but at least there's a something. It's something that's right. Spark something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can spark an interest and sometimes, when we're doing some kind of um, we have an amazing team of program coordinators who deliver programming and sometimes they'll be doing something virtually and they can even tell virtually that there's one student in that class who is hanging on to? Every word and they'll put in the group. If you want to reach out to me and oftentimes they do and then that student, we may be able to create an opportunity for in person, find the funding, figure it out 100%, because that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And sparking that interest. And, you know, even coming, we have a lot of kids on our team, and I say kids in particular. We have junior high kids as well as high school students and, a lot of times, students who participate in some of our employability skill areas. They're already the overachievers, they're the students who are getting the medals from us. They're the ones who are winning the speak offs in their school.
Speaker 1:And you know.
Speaker 2:So they are over already on there, you know and you know, some of them already know what they're going to do when they finish high school, and it may or may not be a skill, trade or technology, but getting them to in this environment and see you know people on a podium for being an excellent welder or an excellent graphic designer. They bring that back to their community.
Speaker 2:Right and that pride and that joy. So if they have a friend or a family member or somebody in their school is like oh, you know, I'm interested in welding, but welding, but you know, mom says I should go to university you know, yeah, yeah, yeah they're like oh my god, look at this event.
Speaker 1:It was amazing oh, like you have to, yeah, so like that ripple effect is immeasurable yeah you know, as a not-for-profit you're always trying to measure things but it's you.
Speaker 2:You cannot, you know, you can't, you can't overstate the impact that every single one of these participants has on everybody in their family, everybody in their school, everybody in their community. It's just immeasurable.
Speaker 1:Now, how big of a team do you have? What do you got here from Newfoundland?
Speaker 2:We have 34 competitors. We also have about 40 coaches and supporters Amazing yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 40 coaches and supporters Amazing yeah. Yeah, so we normally have-, but this is a little bit smaller team than normal, right, it is yeah.
Speaker 2:We normally have a little bit of a bigger team. We normally have about 42, 44 competitors. This year we lost a few students, unfortunately because their grad was the same weekend and we tried to but the time difference in the travel from.
Speaker 1:Regina, we tried to get them back in time, but we couldn't.
Speaker 2:And we also lost two students to the Canada-wide science fair. But the team we have are just so excited and so motivated, framed within an inch of their lives and are just having the best experience, and our public college is really great. The College of the North Atlantic they actually send a coach. Wonderful programs there too. Oh my gosh, we're so fortunate. College is really great. They uh, the college of the north atlantic, um they actually send wonderful programs.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, we're so fortunate and and they send a coach with every competitor really yeah, they pay for that unique, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's like even for the students and the coaches can't interact with them, obviously, while they're competing, but even just knowing that they're there and looking up and going okay, because they have such a relationship with these students, you know, and being able to look up across the rope and seeing that your're there and looking up and going, okay, because they have such a relationship with these students, you know and being able to look up across the rope and seeing that your instructors there and thinking, okay, I'm going to check in with them later about this or that you know, yeah, and just having that support is immeasurable it is you know so our team are um. We like to have a little bit of fun too.
Speaker 1:You have a little bit of fun everyone knows that the maritimes knows how to have fun which is great. Now, with these competitors, you know when you know the history you've been there since the start basically, what are the trades or events that generally you guys crush? That are usually the ones that you know. Every year we're going to have someone in the running.
Speaker 2:I'm like, should I jinx things by saying, um, there's a few areas?
Speaker 1:that we'll get released until after, so no one will know.
Speaker 2:Yeah there's a few areas that we we're always feeling really strongly about. I mean cloud computing. Is is like we're we're selling that architectural design nice um, you know, we often do really well in welding carpentry. You know it's, it really depends on the year right On the industry, on the industry. And, honestly, there's so many things that you cannot predict or control when it comes to competition. You can have the most highly trained, highly skilled person on the floor and something could happen that throws them off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nerves, anxiety, Anything you know the day before the girlfriend could break up with them off. Yeah, nerves, anxiety, Anything you know the day before the girlfriend could break up with them. You never know We've had that happen Dog ate the homework we had someone whose family dog passed away while we were on the you know all these things.
Speaker 2:They're human right, they affect them. So I try not to predict because oftentimes and we kind of the staff we have this sort of thing that we do on after day one of competition, we go out to dinner and we do our guesses, we sit down and say, okay, I think this is what, and then we're always madly wrong.
Speaker 1:We are always so off way, off base Like we were like what.
Speaker 2:No every year. So I mean, I you know, every year is different. Yeah.
Speaker 1:In 27 years. What are the things that you've learned, that that skills has taught you? Because you know you come into this with a clean slate, the learning curve must have been massive, right off the top.
Speaker 2:It was ridiculously steep and that's right.
Speaker 1:And, and at this point, so many years later, you must have learned so much from skills. What would be like your top two or three?
Speaker 2:you know it's funny because I feel like I've grown up with skills. You know it's funny because I feel like I've grown up with skills. So when I started it was just and I'm ashamed to say this, but what a skill trade was.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What a red seal is, and you?
Speaker 1:had to have been like early 20s. Oh yeah, we're trying to do the math here, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was 10. I mean, I was in my late you know, I was in my mid to late 20s and I had done a couple of degrees, purely out of you know no burning passion. Yeah, wasn't like oh, I'm desperate to do a business degree, just oh, I need a job and that's what you do. Yeah, that's what I was told.
Speaker 2:That's what you do yeah and I mean I have no regrets, obviously because I lucked into a gift of a job right that I've loved for all these years, but I think for me, learning about just learning about careers, knowing that I will never know everything there is to know about all of these trades. I will never be an expert in any of these trades. I will never be an expert in any of these technologies, but the joy is finding those that are experts.
Speaker 1:And then.
Speaker 2:So that was sort of when I was early career, realizing I have all these options that I didn't even know about myself, I didn't know I could do this, like maybe I would be a good welder, probably Maybe I could have, maybe I could have done that, and I had no idea that was even an option for me. So that was a revelation. And then, as I moved into as a parent, right.
Speaker 1:So then I had a totally different perspective because I have two children.
Speaker 2:My daughter's 21 and she wants to be a paleontologist, so that's her path.
Speaker 1:She's digging in the dirt. Great job oh she loves it.
Speaker 2:And my son is 17 and he's just graduating now and he is the poster child. I love you, sweetheart. He is the poster child for no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No idea what he wants to do?
Speaker 1:What do you like to do? I don't know. What do you want to do? I don't know. No, you're not going to be an NHL player. No, that's not happening. You'd be on that track by now.
Speaker 2:You would have already been there. Yeah, no, so. And so I've sort of gone through that cycle and, in addition, with my daughter and her friends and their families, that there is still those parents.
Speaker 1:That stigma.
Speaker 2:Who you know? No child of mine, no child of mine. You know you're going to university, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what a shame. And there's a lot of people who have amazing experiences and, like I said, my daughter she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to do science. She wants to be a paleontologist and that's been great for her but the fact that there's, you know, I have so many of her friends had other ideas and their parents wouldn't let them do it and that's outstanding, like outrageous to me that that's still happening.
Speaker 1:The money, because the money's here, so it's not like the money's a discouragement. Is it the fear of safety?
Speaker 2:like I'm not sure what it is, I just think it's that it has been ingrained in in my generation yeah in our generation that this is the path to success yeah and we, we haven't shaken that yet, and so I still see that. And so with my son, you know, I sat with him and went through every single program at, you know, at the public college, at private colleges, at Memorial University, to see if anything sparked an interest. It didn't. He's going to need time, he's going to go work for a bit.
Speaker 1:See what he hates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. But I mean I feel like it's been good for me in that my kids' friends who did have a spark of interest, in something I'd say hey, come to our event, come with me to our event.
Speaker 1:Just try some stuff out. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So I think with that, you know, parents are always going to be the last nut to crack, I think because educators are there, like high school teachers when I first started again.
Speaker 1:Science counselors not on the radar, and they were like oh you can.
Speaker 2:I actually had a teacher in 1998 that I called, said I'd like to come in and talk to you about school trades and technologies. Told me that I could come talk to the remedial class okay, get out 27 years ago. Yeah, that's not 50 years ago, yeah now, that was an outlier yeah um, now, we cannot get in schools enough yeah, they're asking you oh we and that's our superpower at Skills is that our access to the schools, because they know what we can do. We deliver what we say we're going to do.
Speaker 2:And we could, if we had the team, if we had the I was going to say horsepower. Now, if we had the manpower and the people power, we could be in schools every single day doing programming, presentations, you know, skill, futures activities, because the need is there and teachers now are 100%. In my province anyway they are 100% on board in providing all of that information because they know the success their students could have. So, that's probably the biggest change that I've seen over the last 20, 25 plus years.
Speaker 1:I think the proof is in the pudding, because so many of ours I'd say we're probably the same generation, my daughter's 27, my son's 23. And we saw because we did it. I went to university right. So I started welding when I was 17. I went to university and then I went back to welding because there was no way I was going to make as much money with my bachelor's of arts degree that I ever would have made welding. So it was like it seemed like I enjoyed university. But I also took university differently and I always tell young kids this like do trades first, and if you want to go to university later, it's always there. It's always there and you can afford it. You don't have to go to university later, it's always there. It's always there and you can afford it.
Speaker 2:You don't have to go into debt.
Speaker 1:You don't have to mortgage the family future to go get an education, because you have this trade that will support you and keep you yeah.
Speaker 2:One of the things I'm really proud about is in Newfoundland and Labrador we don't have a youth apprenticeship program. The students cannot do youth apprenticeship in high school.
Speaker 1:They can't get an apprenticeship, oh dang.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been working to change that for many years and just a couple of years ago, we I'm smiling at people- is it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know People are waving, we know everyone here.
Speaker 2:A couple of years ago we created something called the Youth Apprenticeship Summer Employment Program.
Speaker 1:Like your own version of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we work with the provincial government.
Speaker 1:Good good.
Speaker 2:And so now, for the first time in Newfoundland history, students can be registered apprentices in high school. So we have a wage subsidy program where of course we pay employers for their wages One day a week or something. Well, it's seven weeks over the summer. Okay, perfect, so it's a summer program, so we're kind of dipping our toe in right. Um, so it's outside of school hours, but uh, it's been such a huge success and we didn't know when we started, we thought well, maybe we'll have 20 people apply, you know um for this summer.
Speaker 1:Uh, we had over 350 students apply you probably don't have any spot, enough spots for them no, we didn't.
Speaker 2:No, we we had, because in our, in our you know, this is a contract we do with the provincial government we had funding for 80 wage subsidies, so but I kind of like that because it made it a competitive yeah, you gotta earn that spot you gotta earn that. This is something special yeah it's kind of like I I applied and I made the cut yeah, like it gives it a little bit of prestige, which it should be right, are competitive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what I think skills really brings out is that this isn't just here, this is the rest of your career. You're constantly, you know, comparing yourself to what's happening in in your trade, what's coming up, the new technologies, the new sciences, and how it affects your job.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, um, yeah, so many thoughts.
Speaker 1:But if you, you know, because what are your favorite trades to watch here? Oh, when you come as a witness, which are the ones you like to hang out at?
Speaker 2:look, there is no beating landscape gardening midday day two. It's just beautiful because it's you know, the day one you start off with a loaded pile of dirt. Right, and at the end, it's this beautiful oasis that any one of us would love to have.
Speaker 1:So I was just saying that there was like that's, I wish that was my backyard. That's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:I love robotics just because it's just fun to watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah Cool.
Speaker 2:Like those kids who are programming and making these robots, have a level of technology.
Speaker 1:And so fast. Kids who are programming and making these robots have a level of technology. When you look at what they got to do in such a short period of time, yeah, so that one's really fun to watch.
Speaker 2:You know hairstyling, I like baking and cooking, cause I like you want to eat. There's so many. I mean some of the computer ones. You know you don't get to see much while they're doing it, but I love to see the final product.
Speaker 1:So, like graphic design, photography, when they lay out all the final projects and see the artistic. Sometimes I wish that they had that at Skills somehow after the event. I know it would cost millions of dollars to do, but they could film every student and you could almost see a recap of each event after, because there's only one of you, you can't follow them all. And sometimes I see some finished products and it's like, oh, that is so amazing.
Speaker 2:I would have loved to have seen the step-by-step of that build right maybe we should set up time lapse of some one of those categories that really has a big building and dramatic, you know end, just to see the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, yeah, but there's so, there's just so many. I love listening to the prepared, the public speaking, competition, because, you know, I love the fact that their topic is always related to skilled trades and the importance in the economy, you know. And so how would you promote skilled trades to underrepresented groups, for example? I think might be their topic this year, and I learn, I learn so much. I've been doing this a long time. I sit in that you know if I'm, if I'm able to sit and listen to their speeches yeah.
Speaker 2:I learn so much I'm like taking notes. I'm going to put that my next speech. You're going to put that in the chairs you know, because you learn, these kids, like they have such creativity in their thought processes, are different, like it's a different generation, the you know they're. I'm really impressed by you know there's a lot of chatter sort of about the effect of COVID on this generation of students because it absolutely did affect them.
Speaker 1:It's a worldwide event, right.
Speaker 2:But I think one thing that I've seen the most is the resilience and you know how they've taken that awful situation and sort of have a renewed joy, for you know what we're able to do.
Speaker 1:It also kind of showed them what world war ii showed the boomers is that you'll get through absolutely you'll get through work, keep at it, don't stop. And. And the essential skills and the trades are are the fabric of that. Yeah, now for for the, for your organization to bring together the ptcs, all the provincial coordinators, and then your national trainers, and then the industry. How do you source all that? How important are the partnerships within your province?
Speaker 2:We wouldn't exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't exist without all of the educational institutions, without, obviously, our provincial government, all of our corporate sponsors, federal government, obviously, our provincial government, all of our corporate sponsors, federal government. But the biggest key for us is because we're such a small province and we don't have, you know, we don't have access to, say, large venues like this, so we rely on hosts for all of our activities.
Speaker 1:Industry hosts yeah industry and unions.
Speaker 2:And you know we work with a lot of the different unions in our province, so anytime, and the doors are always open. Like anytime we want to do. We have a program called Skill Futures, which is all about bringing students in, and they spend half the day doing experiential learning, hands-on on the tools. And the afternoon hearing from mentors in those fields. It's a phone call.
Speaker 1:It's a phone call.
Speaker 2:Any one of the local you know, whether it's industry associations or the unions or the training institutions, it's a phone call. We want to bring kids in you name the day and they go be above and beyond. So, and of course, to do that as well, aside from just having the institution, the volunteers, Like, again comes back to the experts, oh listen, they are key right and we would not exist without that support.
Speaker 2:But thankfully, like I mentioned early, people really get it, people who know about us get it and they want to be, they want to support our kids it's like a whirlpool, though like you dip your finger into it and it's gonna suck you well, we joke that we're the mafia because once you're in, you are never gonna get it and you will want to right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I asked that in the previous guest because she had been around for a long time too. And the mafia comment too, I've been hearing that I've been with skills a long time. I've also sucked in, but now, with the extent of your career, how often? Or how proud, I guess, for the better question, or how proud I guess for the better question are you to see the cycle play out from student to mentor to trainer, to you know, on the exec board, you know?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. We actually have someone here with us this year who's an NTC for the first time, who competed in aircraft maintenance in I believe it was 2000. He was a competitor in 2000 and now he's back as an NTC. And you know we joke that. You know we're too old fogies now that you know, and uh, it's just, it's just so exciting to see the people who value and appreciate the opportunity that they were given want to give that back. They want to come, they want to train.
Speaker 1:They're not just going to take it and hoard it.
Speaker 2:No, they want to share it with the world and they want to take what they've learned and their experiences, good and bad, their challenges and their successes with the new student, the new competitor.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:Because they want to make it easier for them, and we have several competitors who have gone on now to serve on our board, which I love because they've seen the whole spectrum, they know what it's like, and in our province we actually offer a competition at the junior high level. We've been doing that now for-.
Speaker 1:So grade seven, or grade six, seven and up Now there is a grade six student.
Speaker 2:There's a grade six. Some schools are 6 to 9, but most are 7 to 9. They're welcome in grade 6.
Speaker 1:We've been doing that for almost the entire, like 26 years. Some people will say that's too young, but I disagree. No, not.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you. The reason that started was when I was doing provincial competitions. In the beginning I felt that by high school they've already got their attitude set. They may not know what they're doing, but these attitudes that they have about what a valuable career is, that is set before they get the hot.
Speaker 1:It's there, right.
Speaker 2:So it was important to me to start much earlier. And one of the fun things about our intermediate competition so at our intermediates, we offer, you know, all of the technology areas, all of the fun things about our intermediate competition. So at our intermediates, we offer, you know, all of the technology areas, all of the employability areas. We do robotics. This year we're going to be doing co2 car races and some green energy competitions for the first time.
Speaker 2:What I find about that event is they're still young enough that they're not too cool yeah so they show up and schools show up in like matching costumes and you know like they can be free, they have. So much fun and it's okay to, like you know, be excited by it and show that excitement. So the award ceremony is always so much fun because they're like jumping up and down and screaming, and and I mean the high school students and the post-secondary students, of course they're excited when they win but it's kind of this, more like oh yeah, there's a job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it done, right so?
Speaker 2:uh, but I love the intermediates, because what we find is how that's benefited us in many ways is that the competition experience is one that you can't really explain or prepare anybody until they've done it and because our competition is much smaller than most I mean it's, our competition will never be like. You know, alberta ontario, their competition is as big as this pretty much yeah, close yeah uh, so ours are, you know, a small one at a local community.
Speaker 2:You know it's a much smaller event, um, but what I find is they start now. In junior high.
Speaker 1:We have some competitors that started competing in grade seven and competed for like six years yeah, so they got lots of practice.
Speaker 2:They get, get that experience, they get the stress, they get the time management, they get to learn. You know how to handle those external factors that are affecting them in the moment. But again, a big key for me is that those, again those junior high students go back to their schools and talk about all the cool things Because at that event they may not compete in all the the trades, but we have an extensive try a trade yeah, right where they get an opportunity to try things and learn about them um.
Speaker 2:So again, they bring that back to their school and their parents and their parent and their parents are there and they're excited, and they're, you know, maybe they've never seen some of these categories before, like me you know they don't know um, so the junior high is really an important event for us.
Speaker 1:Uh, we're actually moving towards having an atlantic um well, I was just at skills atlantic there in new brunswick, uh, three weeks ago, and it was wonderful seeing the scale of the event compared to 10 years ago when it was tiny. Yeah, now for your group, as you bring everyone out here and you get them all prepped. So which are the ones, or who is, I guess, going for that world spot? Who do you got here that you think is going to be a world contender? Because there's, sometimes, if you get them young enough, they get, like you said, to your practice thing. If they can get a couple shots at nationals, then they got a real good shot at worlds, right.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't tend to have many people on the world because of the age.
Speaker 2:The under 22 restriction which goes back to the youth apprenticeship yeah so most of our uh apprentices, for example, are, you know, probably closer to 30 than they are to 20 yeah right, so we are ineligible, even if they win gold right they're ineligible. So because of that, we don't tend to have that many on um the team. Um, now we did have somebody on the team, uh in france, uh, in september, and world skills leon in cloud computing, nice. So we'll see, or they did really well they didn't they? Didn't meddle, but they absolutely meddling is no very hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but they've had a wonderful experience. And actually, well is alex edwards. We'll give him a little shout out um, he won the gold last year at the nash, or not last year, the year before at the nationals and, as I said, he went to leon um in the fall.
Speaker 1:Uh, he's here now um, but as a mentor he's here as a coach, nice right, and he's here with uh to support um this year's competitor.
Speaker 2:So I mean that's, that's. I have some hope there, because he's actually our competitor in cloud computing. Is age eligible, awesome. So we'll see. I guess we'll see Saturday morning, but otherwise.
Speaker 1:I mean you just never know Right but.
Speaker 2:But a lot of the world categories are areas that we tend to have people that are older than the age.
Speaker 1:The world categories are areas that we tend to have people that are older than the age right. Hopefully we can get that. I know one of the things that the more established provinces have is that once you've won gold in their province, they have basically a full-time training program for the next year and that's that's kind of the dream state to get to, because we know I've been to worlds before. I don't know if you've gone to world yeah, several times yeah you know that those podium finishers at worlds, they were full-time training oh listen.
Speaker 2:Full-time years? Yeah, for a few years yep, that's.
Speaker 1:All they've done is to get on that podium. You know how far are we from newfoundland being able to establish enough funding and and support to get you know some, perhaps cloud computing, some of these key areas that you're really strong in into, like full time training positions?
Speaker 2:I mean that's a Canadian problem. Yeah, you know it's all across the country it is. That is a challenge for us. We all experience. Now, I mean, some categories. We're going to have more access than others and again, cloud computing is a great category to talk about because it's, you know, it's something that, and we actually have the Canadian experts in that category.
Speaker 2:So training for that, though it won't be a full-time, paid experience he will have excellent training, but, yeah, that is one of the biggest challenges that we have as Team Canada, I would argue is accessing the ability to train them the way that some of the other competitors are right, I mean, and some trades have a lot more um access, right like?
Speaker 1:I mean I speak for welding, like we're a welding association for Canada. We sponsor welding across kind of every province. We we do camps and all the stuff. We support skills, but we also put money up, so, like when a gold medal winner is one chosen on sunday or on saturday morning, we have cash to support them. We make sure that they have all the tools. They're not paying for nothing, right? So we have these opportunities, but this is a niche.
Speaker 2:If only we could have that for everything you got to replicate, we got to replicate that now we got to get you up, uh, get your story out with and the success and the reason which I know you are.
Speaker 1:We got ninth in the world, but then we got third in the world. Yeah Right.
Speaker 2:And to show that and see if we can replicate that in some of the other categories and SAIT industry associations and to you know there's a lot of you're getting everything back from your investment.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. If you fortify your industry with these type of success stories, it increases the ability for your entire industry to elevate absolutely, and that's and, and elevate is such a great word, because that's what we do yeah, right that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Right is, you know, and and elevating their experience as well and their sense of pride in what they're doing. You know that's invaluable.
Speaker 1:Awesome, yep. Last two questions. Okay, question number one If you had to pick a trade to start over, Okay, you're a 17-year-old kid and knowing what you know now of all the trades, which is the one you think you'd sign up for?
Speaker 2:Okay. What I would do and what I would be good at might be two different things. I think I would love carpentry. I don't know if I'd be good because I'm not great with my hands, but if I were good, I would just love that concept of just literally building and driving through a city and saying I built that and I made that. That's probably one I would love. On a technology side, I think I'd like something probably like graphic design, something creative.
Speaker 1:Are you artistic?
Speaker 2:No, that's why I said I couldn't do either of those things, because I have no skill at all. But if this was an alternate universe, I think that would be a really fun pathway to follow.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Last question Knowing what you know and being such a great director that you are, what advice would you give to a young competitor looking to get into this world?
Speaker 2:Get into competitions.
Speaker 1:Get into competitions.
Speaker 2:Listen. Testing yourself is one of the best ways to grow as a person. Yeah, we already discussed that. I'm going to get emotional, okay, and I almost made it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was waiting for this at the end.
Speaker 2:It's just whether you win a gold medal, whether you place at all, whether you mess something up day one, challenging yourself and putting yourself by choice in that stressful environment vulnerable is going to create a resilience in you that will help you in anything you do for the rest of your life you're always going to look back and say I did that, yeah, I was brave yeah and you know even the way that the competitors interact with each other is.
Speaker 1:You see, that camaraderie. Like I told the welders, look around this room. You guys are going to be friends for life. Whether you know it or not, you really will. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I personally would value seeing one of our competitors showing kindness to the other competitors and creating those relationships. That's even more valuable to me than them taking a medal, because they will have that contact, that friendship, that shared memory.
Speaker 1:Because this is an experience right and their life will be so full of success. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And no matter how they perform, no matter where they are in the standings, they're going to come out of this a better person than they came here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it, love it. That was fantastic. I saved the juicy one for the end there, so, yeah, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show with us this has been fantastic.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and thank you for all the support for skills canada. We really appreciate everything you do for us awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, and for all the people following along these skills episodes, remember there's a whole bunch of them. We're going to be recording for two days straight, plus some online, but when you, if you happen to stumble into this one, watch them all. They're amazing stories, from province to province to territory, all three coasts of Canada, all right, and so I'll catch you at the next one. We hope you enjoy the show. Bye.