Both Shae McDermott and Olivia Doll liked using the acetylene torch as they were taking the Mind over Metal welding course at Sask Poly. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Petal to the metal

Petal to the Metal: girls take over Sask Polytech welding shop

Aug 17, 2023 | 4:00 PM

For the last week the welding shop at SaskPoly’s Prince Albert campus has been filled with teenaged girls. The school is running a Mind over Metal camp to encourage girls to get into trades.

“My personal goal is to take anyone who sort of doesn’t feel comfortable in the male space, can feel comfortable here and hopefully turn some of them to trades,” said Kelly Clegg, the Women in Trades and Technology Co-ordinator for the school.

“I want to give everybody who wants to try welding, carpentry, plumbing, electrical – any of these trades – a chance to try it in kind of a safe, a welcoming, a very equitable-minded space.”

Metal and working with it can be practical – or it can be artistic. The 15 girls in the course got to take their pick. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

She has run similar courses in the past and occasionally they can be hard to fill up far enough in advance that they can safely proceed with the course.

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Not this time.

Thanks to the encouragement of a few moms and the willingness of some teens to bring their friends along, the slots were all full.

Two of those friends were Shae McDermott, age 15 and Olivia Doll, 16 who have different motives even if they are working on the same projects.

“A friend of mine’s mom suggested it to me because I’m looking to get into auto body technician stuff and then so I thought welding could always help with that,” said Shae.

Long term, she wants to start customizing cars and making unusual builds and some welding knowledge will be useful.

For Olivia, she found a new way to express her artistic side.

“My mom saw it on Facebook and she thought it’d be a really good opportunity for me and I’m into a lot of different kind of art forms, so she thought we could be something I could experiment with the arts,” she explained.

Staring on Monday, August 14, the girls have spent their days in the welding shop along with 13 other local teens and have gone from being hesitant around the equipment to confidently lighting up acetylene torches or running a plasma cutter.

Shae has watched her dad welding before but found holding the torch herself to be an entirely new experience.

“Coming here, I kind of knew about it, but it’s a whole different thing when you’re actually doing it,” she said.

For Olivia, she had never seen or done it before except on TV and said the experience was completely new to her.

Her metal flowers will be given to family members as gifts.

The program is set up to entire girls to get into trades and to remove any kind of obstacle. So all of the instructors/mentors over the last week have been women working in trades.

The best instructors to convince girls to get into trades are women that are in trades. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

Clegg said that in the next seven years, over 700,000 tradespeople are needed in Canada, many in the home construction industry but Saskatchewan’s mining and resource industry is also growing and in need of people.

“When you do a class of 10 or 12 at a time, it takes a long time to get there, so we have to really promote and really encourage the next younger generation,” Clegg explained.

The school runs many courses that welcome boys as well but have female-only classes helps girls be more confident in coming.

The course is sponsored by Uranium producer Orano Canada so there was no cost for the students to enroll.

Clegg enjoyed watching the change in the students over the week.

“They’re really creative and they’re taking some of that creativity of drawing and those kinds of things and then applying to how do I make this in metal,” she said.

Flower power. The acetylene torch softens up the metal so it can be shaped. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)