The CWB Association Welding Podcast

Episode 250: Welding Education with Darryl Madussi

• Kevin Roy • Episode 250

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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. Subscribe, listen, and stay connected to the people who keep the world welded together

Welding may look simple on camera, but real skill comes from proper education and practice. In this episode, we sit down with Darryl Madussi, Welding Professor at Fleming College. We unpack what Canadian welding training gets right and where it falls short. We also challenge the myth of fast-track six-figure jobs and explore the gap between foundational training and job-ready skills. Solutions like reverse job fairs show how students and employers can connect in more meaningful ways.  We also discuss innovations like Crew Connect that support worker well-being, and how the industry can create stronger, more inclusive pathways without compromising quality.

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Welcome And Sponsor Discount

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Wat. Let's flip up the lid and spark some conversation. 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 podcast listeners get 10% off any pair of welding gloves. Use code CWB10 at checkout when placing your next order. Visit Canada Welding Supply.ca now. Canada Welding Supply, your trusted welding supplier. Happy welding. Welcome to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. I have a wonderful guest with me today, the Mad Welding Professor, Daryl Medusi. How are you doing, Daryl? Hey, I'm good, man. How are you? Pretty good. I guess May, well, when this episode's being released is May. So May is mental health month. So it's kind of crazy that I'm having the mad welding professor here. So Daryl, tell me, what do you do for a living?

SPEAKER_03

Uh so I'm a teacher at Fleming College here in Ontario, uh, Peterborough, Ontario. Uh teach in the welding program. We have two programs at Fleming. Um, teach a little bit to other trades, uh, if they have to take welding. So in the apprenticeship standard, we've got carpenters and plumbers, and we do uh pre pre-apprentice electricians, and but mostly I teach welders. Very cool.

SPEAKER_02

So let's go back. When did you first discover welding?

Learning Fast In A Helicopter Shop

SPEAKER_03

Huh. Well, my dad was an electrician, and uh he was a kind of do-it-all trades guy, and he let me stick weld in the I remember it was on the lawn, I think I was about seven or eight, and he let me and my brother stick weld. He was making something, so we started stick welding in the lawn. I guess that was my my first try at welding, um, having a trades family. My brother was a machinist at a local shop. Uh, he started there, I think, when he was 15 or 16. Um, and I started there at 14. So uh I was working shaping parts, and my boss said I was had an interest in welding, and he said, Well, if you want to teach yourself how to weld after hours, I'll show you the the basics. And so I spent time after work was over teaching myself how to TIG weld, and after about three months there, so I was 14 years old, I was TIG welding on helicopters.

SPEAKER_02

That's a crazy story to me.

SPEAKER_03

Like 14, is it legal to work at 14? I don't know if it is anymore. No, nobody said anything back then. And in Northwood, the remote northwestern Ontario, it was a job, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they'll take whoever they can get. So you were working, so you ended up working on helicopter parts.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so it was experimental helicopters. They used to be called um baby bells, but they look like a baby bell helicopter, but they're two seaters. Um, so basically, you could buy a kit from them, so it would have the whole tail bloom and the cab assembly all welded. Um, and then you'd get the sheet metal, the motor, the parts all in boxes, and you assemble it yourself, and they're experimental, so they kind of fall outside of the aviation guidelines. I'm not sure they let me fly a few, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I guess if you don't, you know, certify them as anything, then hey, it's it's up to you. Go out there and do it. I got a buddy who who flies airplanes, and yeah, they're a few of them are experimental. Yeah. So what made you decide then, or to what made you decide to chase welding as a career?

SPEAKER_03

Just falling into it or just you know what I think I lucked out. Like my dad was an electrician, my brother was into machinists. I started this welding job, and I just I loved it. Like at high school, I showed my high school shop teacher, you know, how to set up the welder, how to weld. I just I just found it and it was something that you know I really enjoyed. I was maybe not the best kid growing up, and besides sports and snowmobiling, that's kind of what I had was going to hang out at the shop and weld. So I guess that made me really like it. And I so I kind of pursued that passion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Did you then take any kind of formal training when you got out of high school?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so after high school, um I applied to a whole bunch of colleges. I like I said, maybe wasn't the best kid growing up, so it was time for me to move away from home. So I found the furthest college I could from where I grew up, and that was Conestoga, who offered the longest program I could take. So I took uh a three-year welding, it was manufacturing, engineering, technology, welding, and robotics was the name of it uh back then. I think they've changed the name a few times, but it's essentially a three-year welding technology course.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. So, did you do anything in the meantime while you were going to school? Because since you moved so far away from home, what did you end up doing for work in between if you did if you worked?

SPEAKER_03

So uh I was bouncing uh tables at a bar. That was kind of fun, honestly. It was a fun job. And uh I picked up hours working on a chicken farm. So the guy who was coming to school with us, he his parents had a chicken farm that he was taking over and he needed help on turnover days. So yeah, I was working on the chicken farm and waiting, waiting at the bar after after school, and then in the summertime uh I was still welding at the helicopter shop, but things were a little bit slow there. So I also got uh into aluminum welding. So I did uh worked at a prop repair shop doing props in lower units. So again, northwestern Ontario, lots of tourists. They don't know where the rocks are, they're not labeled, makes the prop shop a lot of money. We'd have boxes of props every week.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, actually, you know, the shop that I work at, we fix a lot of boat skegs. Like I've got one on my bench right now waiting for tomorrow. So it's season, season is starting.

SPEAKER_03

So I did that one summer and then uh actually worked in the logging industry for a couple of summers. The union had a thing to push to get kids into the logging industry, so I got to I I operated a grapple skitter for two summers and got my grapple skitter license. So that was kind of a different thing. They offered me a full-time job, and it was pretty cool to go out four-wheeling in the bush all day, every day, but you know what, it's hard on your body, and I thought welding was probably a better choice for me.

Quality Control And Exotic Alloys

SPEAKER_02

Boy, were you wrong? No, that's pretty impressive. Like doing that type of work is is kind of crazy to me. That's awesome. So then, so you graduate welding school. Um, what did you do after that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so graduated college, and again, I I think I lucked out. I went to I think it was Moto Man. I got a job or I got a job interview for a robotic programmer, and I took the robot and crashed it into the wall.

SPEAKER_02

Great, great interview.

SPEAKER_03

It didn't go so well. So I actually got hired on at a boiler and pressure vessel shop working in the quality control department as their welding specialist and kind of uh rookie QC inspector, and that's you know, where I spent the next 12 years of my career was at that shop kind of moving around.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's a lot of experience. 12 years to be at one place. I've been at my place for 20 years. So you were mostly QC, or did you ever do any welding on that stuff?

SPEAKER_03

So I started in QC, so I wasn't in the union, I was in management, so I never actually welded on the projects. Um, but I would certify all of our welders, and when we had to run new procedures and stuff, I would work with our metallurgist and get those done. Um, I worked, I got promoted then to welding foreman, where I was running jobs on the floor and still being our welding specialist. So uh lots of high alloy stuff. So sulfuric and nitric acid coolers, um, lots of them running in seawater conditions. So we did lots of stainless, lots of duplex stainless, hasty loys, titanium, uh, so lots of cool alloys. Um so eventually they promoted me to welding technologists where I just worked on welding procedures and training and being competitive. And also we had some products that were hard to weld, uh, needed a lot of training. So if we we shipped globally, so if something broke down somewhere we had to do shutdown work, we'd have uh local shops we'd train to do the repair work. So I was doing a lot of that training those local shops, how to do repairs, how to big build the stuff that we build so that we could have you know tighter turnarounds on our global kind of products that are out there.

Teaching Quality Through Real Failures

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's something to think about. I just I just did an episode with uh engineering student Mia, and she she's working on uh wire arc additive manufacturing, and she's trying to solve those issues too, where you're shipping something all over the world and maybe you're missing something. Well, can you 3D print it out of metal? Like it's I just blew my mind. I had to bring that up because you're kind of talking about the same thing. Yeah. That's that's that's pretty amazing. So, what do you think? Like looking back on your your long history of work and and how you came up in the trade, um, what kind of skills transfer to you being an instructor?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, transfer to I'm super picky about my work. I I like to do high-end stuff. I'm not a production guy. I know that I just I like the high-end stuff. And when it comes to the students, I I think that you know, I teach them at you know, 120%. And then if they come out of that at 80%, you know, they're still pretty high up there. So I you know that's what I take out of it. Is we did real high-end stuff. If you screwed up, it was gonna crack. It was like so. I take I listened to an episode with Laura on here, and I actually graduated with Laura, and she she teaches metallurgy with her students, and I I like to build that in, right? Like I build in the metallurgy, I build in when I'm teaching that kind of stuff, like deposition rates of different processes, like why would you choose this over this? And it's not always for the fastest. Sometimes it's because of you know how the grains are affected. And so I like to build that like that understanding into it, right? Like, not just create a production welder. I like to create a welder who knows the the insides and outs of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, actually, that was what gonna be one of my questions. Like, how how do you go about teaching a student that? Because, like, in some places, like welding is just you're gonna drag this rod or you're gonna pull this trigger. So, how do you go about teaching those, the, the puddle control and and the arc length and what settings do what? Um, I think I mean that's you know, we like to tie in the theory to it. Myself, I'm you know a physical learner. I have to see it to understand it. So, what kind of stuff do you guys do at the school to show the puddle control or to show the heat input?

SPEAKER_03

So, I guess um, like one, I like to build on my experiences with them. Like, I think the easiest way to learn is through failure. So I have pictures and videos of a lot of the stuff that I seen screwed up and I screwed up. So I'll show them that, right? Like, okay, if you do this, here's what happens. So I also like to do stuff in the lab with them where it's like, hey, well, what happens if we weld in the wrong polarity? And I'll like, hey, let's weld in the wrong polarity and then do a bend test, right? Yeah. Or hey, what does an arc strike do? And be like, hey, well, just run an arc strike across that brand new piece of plate, and now let's go do a bend test, and it snaps in half, right? And it's like, okay, now I can tie in the metallurgy, right? Like, okay, so the arc strike quenched that spot there, that quenching effect, hardened the steel, right? And then also there's probably a crack that started there. Now, when we wrap it, it doesn't have the elongation. They're like, Oh, okay, I can kind of like tie it in, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I would love to see that. Like, that's stuff like you you take the time to to do the mistakes and then show what happens. That's huge.

SPEAKER_03

And I honestly, the hardest thing to make in welding is a defect.

SPEAKER_02

And you want it. I I agree. There's one point where where somebody at the CWB asked me to to make some, you know, coupons that they could look at with defects with mistakes in them. And like being a proud welder like yourself, like it's so hard to do a weld.

SPEAKER_03

When you want something to crack, it does not crack. That's I was trying to make uh meg particle samples, and so eventually I just had to not properly back gouge them to make them because like I can't get this to crack properly.

SPEAKER_02

Years and years of mistakes, and you just can't make them anymore.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Then when you don't want it to happen.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So speaking of mistakes, um, what are the common mistakes that you see, you know, people coming up or your students making in the trade or or while they're in school?

SPEAKER_03

I think uh a big thing that not necessarily a mistake, but it's a misunderstanding about the trades. I think that people think, you know, I'm gonna sign up for this welding course and I'm gonna show up for 90% of the classes and I'm gonna make a hundred grand next year. It like it doesn't work that way. I I tell all my students it's a skill-based trade. If you want to be good at it, you have to be in the lab practicing outside of class time, like working on your skills, and you have to be critical of your own work. Like, I have a lot of students who will weld something up and bring the first one up. Hey, is this good enough? Show me uh show me 20 or 30, and then ask yourself Did I get better? Is there things I could improve on? But I think a lot of students just want it, like they think it's gonna be easy. And I tell them, you know what, the things that pay more are harder. The more you have to practice, the more you have to work at it, the better it pays, too.

SPEAKER_02

So very true, very true, as a wellness.

SPEAKER_03

That ambition.

SPEAKER_02

So you gotta have it, it's not just and I see it too, like in the industry, I see it on social media, I see it pretty much everywhere. It's just like it it's kind of fed to the young people now where it's like, yeah, get into the trades and instantly you're making huge bucks. But you gotta put in the work, you have to pay your dues. And yeah, if if it if it came easy to everybody, then everybody would do it, right? There's a reason why those guys that are out there making hundreds of thousands of dollars are doing that.

SPEAKER_03

And that's I often tell them if you wanted something easy at college, you go to the other end of the school.

SPEAKER_02

Well, we could we we could dive into that too, but yeah, so yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03

It's that it's like a s I I actually just wrote an article that's gonna be posted in the CW magazine, um, the Weld magazine, but I tell them it's like a sport, right? It's like Connor McDavid's the best hockey player, he still goes to practice, right? He's still trying to get better, and that's what I think working in the trades, especially welding, like you have to want to go to practice, right? You have to be passionate about it.

Upskilling Gaps After Graduation

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. And especially welding is is constantly changing, the technology is constantly changing, uh codes are changing. So if you always stay in that same spot, then you'll get left behind. Yeah. So, how do you think um training programs, especially like your training program, align with industry needs right now?

SPEAKER_03

I think we have a skill shortage, but it we have a I personally feel like we have a misalignment of training. I think our colleges are doing a good job with program advisory committees hitting the local markets. Um, but I can only really speak to Ontario here. I know every province's education system is quite different. But you know, we've got high school shops now starting. There's some great high school shops here who are teaching some good stuff, and I think that's awesome. And I think high school shops should be teaching the safety aspects and really getting kids interested in it. Then we can take those kids at the college level and we talk to industry, and I mean, industry loves our program, they're really happy with it, and our administration is happy with our program, they listen to what we have to say, and so you know the high school kids we come in with some training, that's amazing. We take them up to that next level. We don't have enough time, though, to get them to the top, right? Like in two years or a year, I can't make you the best welder you can be. You're gonna have to do that in industry. And so then there's two streams they go into after that. They either go into the private sector or they go into a union. And the unions do a really good job of apprenticeship training. However, in the unions, they're really streamlined afterwards. So if you're an iron worker, you're gonna learn what they do, and that's kind of it, right? In the private sector, some are gonna train you, some will apprentice you, and some are gonna do nothing. But where I see the the block here is there's some awesome high school kids and some awesome high school shop programs, and they get them good enough that they're like, hey, this kid can go to work and make 25, 26, 27 bucks an hour. And those kids take that opportunity and and it might be, let's, for instance, you might be metal core welding tractor frames all day. Yeah. That's kind of that's it. Like you're stuck there. There's no way to get from you know, metal core welding tractor frames all day to in Ontario, anyways, the new plants right now are looking for pipe welders. Like you can't train yourself to be a better pipe welder if you're practice or if you're welding metal core on a tractor frame all day. So there's this there's this huge disconnect where the the best kids are getting cropped off at the top of high school and they're going to work because we have a need, right? Like people need workers. So they're offering these, you know, kids at 17, hey, I'll pay you 25, 26, 27 bucks an hour, but at 40 years old, that's not cutting it anymore, especially in Ontario. So I I feel like the the system's just not quite working.

SPEAKER_02

Like Yeah, it's it's almost backwards, right? You'd want you'd want these, you know, special kids to to further that. They already show the interest, they already show the skills. You wanna you want to put more behind them to get them keep to get them more, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so so they get cropped off. We get the next set of kids, and I mean there's some great kids in there. We've got some awesome graduates. Um, and then they go out into the workforce, but whether or not, again, they get that training, like where's the upskill happening? Right? How do you how do you get to be, you know, how do you go from production welder to 6G pipe welder? Yeah. So we have a lot, we have so many programs like get in get kids interested in trades, you know, high school programs for trades, we've got women in trades. We have hundreds of kids waitlisted on our program. But then when they graduate, I feel like that's where the missing link is. How do we guide them through the first five years of their career? Right? Like, how do we get them the job, get them then training on the job, and then other skills? Like, I don't see the problem as much up to the college, like, and if they're doing apprenticeship, that's amazing, but it's those other ones that get lost in that shuffle. Like, how do you help them in those first five years of their career?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, I think at some point there's gonna have to be some kind of o oversight or government involvement or incentive for companies to want to do that, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's I think I I bet you we lose. I I don't have the numbers. I I saw a post online, but most tradespeople, it's the first two years is when they quit. Right. Yeah. And yeah, and lack of lack of support, right? Well, or even just not even getting an opportunity. I've got so many kids that are eight hours training away from being perfect at any task you want them to do, but they just need somebody to give them the eight hours training, right? Like we give them a very broad training on everything, but if you've got a specific task, they come in for a weld test. We've we've proven with companies that we've taken companies into our shop and said, Here's our students for six hours, train them on your weld test. They all pass, right? Like that's they need that opportunity.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And it's kind of nerve-wracking when you walk into a shop, you know, fresh out of school, and you go for that weld test, and then it doesn't go well, you know, that that kind of that stings.

SPEAKER_03

That's they get so nervous over weld tests. So the one thing I'm not good at is structural. I've never worked in the structural industry. So kind of now to a to a point, I've never had a CWB welding ticket. So I tell the students that I'm like, listen, because they all get so stressed out on test day. I'm like, look, you guys all respect me quite a bit, right? I've never held a CWB ticket. And they all look at me like I'm like, I worked in an ASM boiler impressor bachelor shop. Like, it makes no difference. I was like, this is just another day, right? Just go weld the thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you had no need for it, but you I have the same mindset as you, and I didn't start out that way, but like test day is just another day. The less you stress yourself out about it, I think the better you're going to do. So I I test every year. Every year I have a CWB ticket that gets, you know, that gets up or my pressure ticket is up. So I'm always testing. So I I kind of have programmed myself to just not stress out. It's just another day, right?

SPEAKER_03

And that's honestly, if I'm thinking about it, like if you're stressed out about your weld test, you know, I'm more stressed out about the pressure vessel not holding 20 years from now, the pressure vessel letting go. Like, let's be stressed about the welds that matter, and the test is the only one that doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think it was uh uh Jason Becker's our junkies. Him and I were talking, and he said he's like, if you treat every weld like it is a test, then test day is no problem, right? You're absolutely right, you should be worried about the stuff you do every day, not this one specific day, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, like that the test weld's going in the garbage, the building's gonna be there.

Reverse Job Fair That Gets Hires

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, this building's standing up, but your thing is in the scrap in. Yeah, that's that's crazy. So uh you were talking about your students and um uh bringing companies in. You had a uh industry showcase day, didn't you, recently?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so we kind of that was when I first started at the college when I I did coordinate the program for seven years that I was there. Um so I really wanted the again trying to get exposure at the college. So a hard thing, too, is when we hear the welder shortage, but then nobody knows you have a welding program.

SPEAKER_02

How does that work?

SPEAKER_03

Right? So I just wanted to expose our program, and we have like every college host career days where the employers are there and the kids go around and talk to them. And I thought, let's do this the other way around. Like, we're doing something pretty cool at Fleming. We got a pretty cool project. Um, it's it's a good thing for them to display. I had them in project management, it was one of the courses I was teaching. So I was like, let's organize basically like a reverse job fair. So we had the students line up with all their projects, all their everything they've worked on in their two years at school, and we invited industry in to talk to them. And so we started that about 10 years ago, and then now it's really getting some traction, it's really getting big, and it's it's most of our students get job interviews, if not jobs, that day. We've got a pretty close to 100% employment rate out of that program, and the people that show up that day, like you get to see the work that they did when they're not stressed because it's not test day. This was their actual work, right? Like, so you can look at their welds. If you got a pipe shop, you can look at their pipe welds. If you're a structural shop, you can look at their structural assembly. Uh, we they do a little pressure vessel on top, and then they have all their tickets there. So we really just kind of flipped the narrative on it and said, Hey, here's the kid who wants the job and all of their work and everything they're proud of, right? You talk to them and you can ask them questions. So it's kind of worked really well for us.

SPEAKER_02

I could see how that would work great, actually. Like, that's that's a very good idea. I think that should happen all over Canada. Like, we do we do something similar here in in Regina with the the CWB Regina chapter and SAS Polytech, the the tech school here, and we do a careers in welding night where you know we bring high school students or anyone who's interested in a career in welding, and we get the students to give them tours of the shop and show them you know exactly how they're doing what they're doing. But it's you know, we do have some industry coming, but not not as much as I'd like. Yeah, yeah. How do we get them interested?

SPEAKER_03

That's that's where I'm like, if like the welder shortage is here, we've got the welders, right? Like, so that's that's what I think industry needs to hear is like if if you want to get involved, get involved with your college, get involved with your high school. Like, high school's budgets are so small, but that's like we hear a lot about the the welding shortage, and that's where we're the industry partners that we partner with don't suffer the shortage nearly as much.

Sponsor Break And Return

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's super cool, man. Listen, we're gonna take a small break here uh to listen to our podcast sponsors, so we'll be right back with Daryl Medusi.

SPEAKER_00

Discover the future of manufacturing at FabTech Canada, Canada's largest metal forming and fabricating event. Automation, lasers, welding, and finishing, it's all here, June 9th to the 11th in Toronto. Free to attend. Register now at FabTechCanada.com.

Skills Ontario And High-End Standards

SPEAKER_02

Welcome back. We're just gonna jump right back in with Daryl Medusi. So, Daryl, let's talk about your involvement with uh Skills Ontario.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, yeah. Uh, my first year uh with our two-year program running, so I think that was about 12 years ago now. Um, we decided to enter skills. I was like, I went and I competed in skills in college, it was a lot of fun. My roommate actually, Ben Van Dorp, he won uh for our college that year, and then he won Skills Ontario, and I think he medaled at Canada that year, so I was like, we gotta go to Skills, like that's something we gotta do. So we had never competed, and I threw it out to the students. We had a little internal competition and we picked a kid to go, and he won first. Nice, so and what what year was that? Uh, I think it was about 12 years ago. I mean, and I I'd have to look. Okay, so 2014-ish. Okay, and you've been doing it ever since? So, yeah, that's the first year we went. We got to go to nationals. He got seventh at nationals. I mean, never been there, never been at skills. I was like, this is awesome. So sent another couple kids, and then as soon as I got there, I was like, I love this so much, I want to get involved. Uh, so I it was Robbie Duncan and Josh Hyde were were running it, and I said, What do you guys need me to do to help? Yeah, and Robbie just put me to work, and uh, I think then he decided he was gonna retire from it, and I was there helping, and he let me take his spot. So now I've been co-chair with Josh here for the last I guess nine years for Ontario. Um, and last year is when I met you in Regina. I that's right. My second time going to nationals, I had another kid win. So, I mean, that was a pretty awesome experience to get to go to nationals again. This time I was a little bit more experienced, so had some good training with my student, and we ended up getting second at nationals, so huge victory for our little college, and yeah, congratulations! Yeah, thanks. I love the skills, I just love it. It's that competitive nature in me. It's that you know, it's those kids that put in the time and they practice and they practice, and I just love that competitiveness. So I I wanted to be involved. Love it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I guess we kind of touched on it, but why do you think skills is important or getting involved with skills is important?

SPEAKER_03

So, same thing. I uh I'm into the high-end stuff, I like quality stuff, and when you see these kids competing at skills, I mean they are better than everyone, they are so good, they put in so much time, and to see what's coming up from these colleges and union training centers and private training centers, to see the quality coming up, like that's what I love about education.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that is amazing. I I see it too. Like, we've hired a few skills competitors at my shop, and I do see it like the attention to detail, or especially when it comes to like Tig, you know, like these guys just get it. Like, there's something about watching the puddle and heat input and stuff. Like, just recently had one of our newer guys like just jump in on TIG and one day, one day on the machine, and he's doing quality work where it takes some people months, months to to get that skill.

SPEAKER_03

That's that's uh coming to nationals, seeing them hydro test to close to a thousand psi with basically short circuiting. Like there's some awesome skill there, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And like the people that understand tying in and the corners and having that radius corner, how important that is. Yeah, I've seen that. I think well, where was I? I was in Quebec for skills, and the the pressure machine broke on one student's project, like they just couldn't get it to go high enough, it just maxed out. That's right.

SPEAKER_03

We worked on the one, there's one little corner there. Like Shane and I worked on that one little corner. I was like, you gotta get that one. That's that's where it's gonna leak, and he got it. He got his pressure test all the way to max.

SPEAKER_02

So that's amazing. So on the other side of that skills coin, uh, I guess you could call it, um, how important is it to have industry involved with skills?

SPEAKER_03

So it's expensive. Um, the competition's expensive. So the Ontario competition is actually the largest in the country. We take in 20. So in the on the Monday, we run our post-secondary, so our um college competitors, college unions, any private training center, and we take 27 of them. We have a wait list, so we can't take any more. On the Tuesday, we take 27 high school competitors, those 27 already came from six pre-qualifying events. Whoa. And those came from their local qualifying events. So, I mean, we're maxed out. Um, we've got some awesome people donating material and time. Uh, we've got people like Miller's donating equipment for them to use, we've got airly key donating gas, but I mean it's it's so much time. There's material every year. Josh does different drawings every year. We need it all plasma cut and beveled, and like there's so much that we need help with that you know, when industry helps there, again, I think skills is an untapped market. If I owned a welding company, there would be a job offering for second and third place winners. Like, yeah, it would be there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, even if you don't win first, just the time and effort that you've put in shows um, I guess, a work ethic, right?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah. Like you're already the best of something if you're there, right? And yeah, like you've won your college, you're already the best in your college, you're the best representative from your college, right? So you're already there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Actually, a friend of mine, Adam, which Adam was a fierce welding competitor, and he went to Worlds and all that stuff, and you know, he came back disappointed. I think he got sixth or something in worlds, and I was like, ha, you're the world's sixth best welder. You suck, you know, like, no, you don't. And actually, Adam now is a very successful rig welder and runs his own company.

SPEAKER_03

That's one thing I've learned working all over the world is that everyone thinks they've got the best welder. And I guarantee you, you don't. There's a best welder somewhere else. That is the only time you get to say, I am the best, is if you win world skills. Yeah. Every shop thinks they've got the best welder. They don't. These at the next shop.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Honestly, the best welder out there right now probably doesn't post on social media because he's busy welding.

Social Media Versus Real Welding

SPEAKER_03

Right, that's what I tell my kids too. I call my students my kids, sorry, but I'm like, listen, the guys who welded under me didn't own a smartphone and they were not posting on social media.

SPEAKER_02

Like, I guess while we're touching on social media, because I've been on there for a while and whatever, but like it seems now that it's more about like just like silly stuff sells, or it's not about the welding anymore, it's about how you look doing the welding, or how how you can edit this video, or you know, like, oh, let's get let's get these influencers together and let's have a welding day.

SPEAKER_03

But I'm not a social media guy. Uh my students actually I started Instagram when I went to Nationals because we had to post and like hashtag it, and I didn't know what that was, so my students started my Instagram account for me. But so I started the mad welding professor one when some students were like, Oh, you should post some of this stuff you're doing, and I was doing some artwork, and people are like, You should post it. Honestly, I'm not I don't love social media. I think I think for the students, they see these pictures and they're like, I'm never gonna be that good. Or they don't understand, like, there's no start stops in there, they're not showing you the corners. Hey, that coloring on that, that's awful. You don't want that color. Yes, it looks pretty, but that's not gonna, you know, last in a corrosive environment. You know, and I had one kid take, well, they anyway, they all want to do the big weave, right? And then like, let's start with stringers, and he was pretty good. He could walk the cup, and then he he had a test, and 50% of it was for the cap, and 50% of it was for the root. And I think he walked the cup and just laid, and like there was nothing for the backside, so I gave a zero on, and he's was mad at me because he thought I was mad about his weaving, but I was like, You got no pen. I think they I honestly think social media confuses kids. Yeah, I try not to post like just a bunch of beautiful welds. I usually post stuff about students or things, right? But yeah, I I don't love the social media. I think it gives kids a false sense of what industry is really looking for. And you know, you do art, I do a little bit of art. People who post on social media with art stuff, like that's my hobby. I don't know, that's your hobby, I think, right? Like, yeah, yeah, that's not our job, right? Like, no, our job is welding, it's just not as fun to look at on social media.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's true, and like my my eight-hour, nine-hour day, you know, I don't weld too much anymore. I'm I'm a foreman, right? I only get to weld if I'm either showing somebody what to do, or somebody's missing in a certain spot, or I gotta jump in on something, right? So, like for me, when I do get a chance to show it, I want it to mean something, right? And you know, I like to share the stuff that's real. And just recently, you know, people are sending me welding machines, and so we're gonna do honest welder reviews, not this is the best machine out there, and then next week I got another one. This is the best machine out there, right? Like, it's so disingenuous, and I see a lot of people doing that, right? Like, oh, this guy wants to sponsor me, and then the next week, and the next week, and the next week.

SPEAKER_03

That's I'm also not a salesman, I'm as blunt as can be and an honest as honest can be. So, yeah, I'm not good at the salesman pitch. Like, I'll be like, Oh no, this is garbage. You gotta fix this. I worked with a company, and then after working with their machines, they're like, Can you do a review on our machine for us? And I was like, Yep, I can do that, I can pick stuff apart. So actually, I I picked their machine apart and sent it to them, and they changed mostly all the stuff I said. I was like, Okay, awesome.

Mental Health And A New Diagnosis

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, that's good when they're willing to listen. I had the same situation happen with this plasma I tested out. It's like putting it together. I broke the little water separator in the back of it. Like this thing's made out of plastic. How are you gonna screw a metal fitting into a plastic fitting? Like, you put a wrench on that thing, you're breaking it. So they ended up changing it, which is awesome, right? So, Daryl, we uh we introduced it as as May was mental health month. So, can we talk about? I know I've got some mental health challenges every day at my job, but can we talk about some of the experiences that you've had either coming up in the trade or or as an instructor?

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. So I think now being an instructor, I wasn't a good kid. I was pretty hard as a supervisor. Now I've been a teacher for 12 years. I guess I'm getting a little soft. Um dealing with students and actually trying to understand them. Um, and then also myself. So you know, when I first got into teaching, we have accommodations for students. And if when I first started teaching, it's like, I don't understand this, I don't like this. That's not the way industry works. This kid's never gonna make it. And then I actually like slowed down, thought about it, have some own my own personal stuff going on. And you know what? I think we need to take a different look at mental health. Um, and now I'm gonna say in the last two or three years, I've been more of an advocate for mental health and disability in the trades. And I see so many young people who are awesome with mental health stuff, who are awesome with disabilities. And I think we've got a really positive youth coming up. I think it's us older generation that we hide it, right? Like we don't want to talk about it, we don't like it, we don't want to go down the that road. So um personally, I over the last eight years have been I just got diagnosed in 2024, but I've been struggling with uh diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. So going down that road, um there was hard times. Like I had I I I'm divorced, I have four kids. I was going through a divorce, a separation. I mean, then I was going through health struggles, my mental health suffered, and you know what? I I don't think you get it until you're in that situation. Yeah, it all it all came at once for you.

SPEAKER_02

It yeah, it was it came pretty hard, you know. And you're still going to work, and you gotta put on a a good face for your students too, right?

SPEAKER_03

Your students, your kids, you gotta put on a smile, and you know what it was tough. Um then in in 2024, I got diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. I finally found out that there was something wrong with me. I'm not just weird, right? Yeah, every doctor is being oh, that's weird, man.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, healthcare system.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you don't I've heard that so much. Oh, that's weird, never seen that before. So finally getting a diagnosis, I was like, okay, this is it, this is what I needed. I know now what I have, I know there's something wrong with me, I can deal with it. And I thought this would be good for me. My mental health failed completely.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So I went through months of, you know, not wanting to be here. Like not wanting to to finish with this. But you know what? I saw a therapist, I've been through therapy through my divorce. I saw a therapist again through this. Um I see a I see actually an amazing um physiotherapist, and she had me read a book about um it's actually being physically fit and your mental health. So I am a fitness nut. And not a nut. I wouldn't say I'm a fitness nut. I like, I enjoy sports. I play hockey. I run. I work out. Like, and I wasn't able to do those things. And when you learn about the mental ties in your brain to how your body works physically, and so like there's a lot going on there that you don't really have control over.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I, you know, personally I I do get frustrated as well. And like I went through a couple rough years too, where you know, like, what what did I do to my life? Like, what how did I get here? And then you don't really know how to climb out. But like it just like I would go for a walk, right? Like a late night walk. And like go for a 20-minute walk, and like the whole time you're thinking, and it's like a reel in the back of your head, just going and going and going. And then by the time you get back to your front door, you're like, huh, okay, right? Like, there I can look at this differently, or like, you know, you know how that goes.

SPEAKER_03

That's you know, like it's hard being a welder, right? Like, oftentimes you put your hood down and it's just you and your thoughts in there. But for me, teaching, I don't get to do that very often. That was one of the things is I just go in the shop and weld, I just go make something, you know. And the other thing I started doing, which sounds different, but I couldn't talk to anybody, like I hid everything. Yeah, I started talking to my phone. Like people were like, Oh, that's a bad idea, but I was talking to just voice memos, and then I listened to them, and like it was just getting it out actually felt good, and I wasn't actually telling anybody who's still a secret.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, that's that's 90% of it is getting it out, right? Uh like myself personally, I used to, I'm better now, but like it would be internalized, internalized, internalized, internalized, blow up, like have just this intense situation, and then afterwards you got to deal with your blow up, so it's not over, you know. You have to, well, I did this wrong, I uh upset this person, right? You have to deal with it still, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And that's that's part of me. Uh I'm a people pleaser, right? So I want to make everybody happy, and that's one thing I learned in therapy. You're not you're never gonna make everybody happy, and that's not your job. So that's actually been pretty helpful for me.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, good, yeah. The understanding that you're never ever gonna make everybody happy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you can't be everybody's friend, you're not gonna be everything for everybody, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and some, yeah, some people just aren't gonna like you, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm learning what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So, as part of this, and I've heard this come up in a few things, is is what is this crew connect? I I gotta I gotta know about this.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so I should have mentioned crew connect. Thank you for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I I had it in the notes, like I saw it somewhere, I don't know if it was in an email or something, but I know you have something to do with it.

SPEAKER_03

So again, I think I just lucked out, and sometimes you just get lucky. And uh Brandon contacted Skills Ontario because he's developing, he's a high school student. He's developing an app because his grandpa was a boilermaker who went through mental health stuff, and you know, and his grandpa uh what probably wasn't talking about it, and you know what he went through some stuff. So he developed an app for tradespeople. It started, I think, as a high school project, but it was so that basically you could download this app on your phone, and it was a way he wanted to do a mental health check-in. So he contacted Skills and he was like, Hey, I'm wondering if somebody can help me with this. And they're like, I I know just the guy, and they got him in contact with me. And I was like, This was when I was going through this. I was like, Oh wow, that's I was like, when I said there's some awesome youth out there who are doing great things, I was like, Oh my god, like a sigh of relief. I was like, I want to help you. Yeah, so I like I've done nothing on it. I've just answering his questions and being like, No, that won't work, or like, hey, I wouldn't want to tell you that. So, where it's at now is it's an app that you can you you download it on your phone. Every let's say you have a company with a hundred workers, and it's two or three times a day, they'll check in, and there's like two or three buttons you press. So it's not time consuming, it's like 15 seconds. You just open your app and it's like, hey, how's your mood? Good, bad, ugly. How's this? Good, bad, ugly, how's this, good, bad, ugly? Anything to report, yes, no. And what they what the supervisors or whoever gets delegated it, you don't know if it's you, me, or whoever put what in, but they get a chart of like mental health and also physical well-being, because like we get burned out, right? So, like, they'll get a chart and they can say, Holy, like, my whole crew's physical well-being went down on Wednesday at two o'clock. What the hell happened?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03

So then they can go back and say, Okay, Wednesday at two, this happened. Okay, well, and you can get alerts if somebody's not doing well. So I think it's a really awesome tool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that seems like an amazing idea. Like, because most people won't tell you throughout the day like how they're doing, or they're not gonna check in with you, they just want to get the work done, right? So, this is this this would be a great tool to have.

SPEAKER_03

And he's made it anonymous, so it's not like oh, Joe's always mad on Wednesdays when he's gotta stay late, right? Like, it's anonymous feedback from the whole crew, unless somebody's in crisis and they want you to know, right? Like, right, so you can get, yeah, if you've if you're running a construction site and you've got five jobs running, and one job's mental health is at zero and the other ones are at 80s, right? Now we can train the supervisor. What's going on over here?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that sounds amazing. And at the same time, I don't know why my mind's going here, but like, remember roller coaster tycoon? Did you ever play that game?

SPEAKER_03

I did not play that game.

SPEAKER_02

Oh man, so there's like metrics of how your crowd was doing, and you know what rides are doing well and stuff, and like you could pick these people, the people that weren't having a good time at your parking, you could pick them up and dump them in the lake and then forget about them. It's like they were just gone.

Disabilities And Trade Accessibility

SPEAKER_03

That's you know, on that though, and that's where you know, when I first started teaching and I was looking at these accommodations and stuff, I was like, nah, this is bull c right. Having muscular dystrophy, knowing what it's like now, you know what? I can weld better than so many people. I can't lift my arm up, my shoulder didn't work right anymore. You know what? I can't reach things from the high shelf. But that shouldn't keep me from getting a job. I can run a 6G pipe like you can't believe, right? So that's where I started to think like, okay, no, it's it's not, you know what, yeah, you can't do this, but you can do this, this, and this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you shouldn't let that one thing stop you.

SPEAKER_03

That's we ran a course for welders with disabilities. It was just like a one two-day course just to see if it would work. And there was a girl who came in it, uh, I can't remember her name, her last name was Quilty, I think, but her one arm, her one hand was missing, her arm was missing, and her other hand was all buggered up. And we're like, how are we gonna get her to MIG weld? And we just put a trigger lock on, we got her a lighter whip, and I saw this is where social media was great. I saw it on like TikTok or Instagram or somewhere. Somebody puts their hand on like the just like an RC, not an RC car, just like a kid's toy car. Yeah, right. So we got her like a little car to put her hand on, and then you could glide on the wheels, and like a there's so many things you can do if you don't just say no, you can't do that, right? Like there's and honestly, with my own disability, that's where being a technologist is great. I'm like, okay, I can't do that, but how can I problem solve this so I can do it? Right? Like, I'm super independent, I don't like asking for help, which is yeah, not great, but it's that problem solving, and now I'm putting that into like I have had my eyes opened, right? So now I can put that into my students too and say, okay, yeah, you can't do this, but let's figure this out for you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you're a great example, and it's it's crazy that you know, uh a physical in physical health issue or a mental health issue, that you discovering that made you a better person, a better instructor. Like it's crazy, right?

SPEAKER_03

That's if there is a benefit, I'm not really finding benefits yet.

SPEAKER_02

That is that is the one you're you're an inspiring person to your students, and I'm sure your kids too.

SPEAKER_03

That's and the first people I told was my students, and I, you know what I didn't know what to say, but I had to wear a shoulder brace into work, I couldn't write on the board, like it was going through a rough time, and I just I looked at them and I was like, Okay, guys, I've got a neurological condition, it's affecting this. I don't really want to talk about it, but um, you know, I'll I'll be here, but there's some certain things I can do. And they just looked at me the whole class and was like, All right, cool, man. Just indifference. Like, tell an adult, and they're like, Oh man, did you try this? And maybe you should try that, like, do this, do that, go do that. Why can't you just do this? And tell a kid, and they're like, Oh, yeah, cool, man. How can I help? Like, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Adults want to fix your problem where you know the kids just wanna just you know move on, like, yeah, cool, right here.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's they just accept it, right? Like, there's so much more accepting than our generation.

Advice For New Welders

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. So, I guess leads me to another question. If you had to go back, you know, however many years, what would you tell young Daryl?

SPEAKER_03

Get into landscaping.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because that's gonna be easy on your body.

SPEAKER_03

I love gardening and welding, so I combine the two. No, I love landscaping, it's so much fun. No, what I don't I think that I was really lucky on my career path. Like, my parents showed me to work hard, they gave me opportunities, they helped me get to school. I lucked out with my job, I've got an awesome job teaching. I think I lucked out in my career, like everything just kind of worked out to this point. You know, I don't think I lucked out with the DNA I've got with this disability, but you know what? Maybe that's I lucked out in some other areas, so we all we all got dealt our hand.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, all your experiences up until this point formed who you are. So uh, you know, not everyone has something that they're gonna change. Not everyone says, like, oh, I wish I had started earlier, I shouldn't have wasted this much time. It's it's all about experiences. So uh the other side of that, what would you tell um a student or or somebody young that's looking to get into welding but is intimidated or doesn't know how to start?

SPEAKER_03

Just say, you know what? It's if you're into sports or music or anything that you got to practice at, it's the same thing. Like practice makes perfect. Anything that's hard pays better. So the harder it is, the better it pays, the more you practice at it, just keep at it. I tell my students when they're graduating the first uh five years of your career is the hardest. If you can make it through those five years, I tell them to grab on, tell them there's two people they're gonna meet. It's the guy who wants to show them nothing, or the person who wants to show them everything. I'm like, you find that person that wants to show you everything, hang on to them, learn as much as you can, and you know what, you're gonna find your way. You just you gotta be passionate about it and you gotta keep on keeping on. Like you got to keep at it. You can't give up. Hard days come, you're gonna get laid off, you're gonna find have to find different jobs, you're gonna have to use processes you don't like, but you know what, keep on keeping on, and eventually you're gonna find where you fit and what you like doing, and you're gonna get good at it, and it's gonna come.

SPEAKER_02

Amazing piece of advice, Daryl. Thank you so much for being my guest today. Uh, another amazing episode. Like thank you. Like, that's all I can say.

SPEAKER_03

Like, it's it touched on so many different things, and it was it was great, right? It was cool being on here. Uh, super nervous coming on here, critical overthinker. I'm sure I'll hear the episode and pick everything I said apart, but no, it was awesome, man. Thanks for having me. Cool, man. You're gonna hate the sound of your voice.

Wrap-Up And Listener Callouts

SPEAKER_02

All right, man. Thank you very much. All right, take it easy. All right, everybody, we got episodes dropping weekly. Hopefully, we're back on track. So uh hang in there and uh thank you.

SPEAKER_01

You enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociation.org 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. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.