Fighting Maritime brain drain at the steel plant.
Fighting Maritime brain drain at the steel plant
In 1949, for the first time, students of Sydney Academy took charge of the Dosco Steel Plant in Sydney.
What started out as SeniorJunior Executive Day later became called Dosco Academy Day. Every year, managers of the departments at the steel plant would take on students from Sydney Academy to be junior executives for the day.
There were more than 30 positions that were available at the plant for mentorship for the years that the program ran. These were highly sought after positions.
The students were selected to participate through election by their classmates.
The day began bright and early, at 8:30 a.m. when the each manager involved picked up their student at home and drove them to the plant. In later years students arrived at General Office Building early in the morning and were called to meet their mentors.
All of this was done after a rousing performance by the Sydney Academy Band. The students spent the morning learning about their departments with their mentors.
At 1 p.m., the staff and students were treated to a banquet. In the first two years this was held at the Navy League Institute. In 1951 the banquet was moved to the Y.M.C.A. Finally, the event was held at the Isle Royale Hotel.
The luncheon featured speeches by the general manager C.M. Anson, United Steel Workers’ Union president M.E. Corbett and many other dignitaries, including the mayor.
After lunch the students and staff returned to the plant. Managers returned to their work, but students were taken on an extensive tour of the plant. Then at 4:30, C.M. Anson and Mr. Faser, along with their counterparts, were interviewed on CJCB radio.
The day later wrapped up with a ball at the Isle Royale Hotel where students and their guests dressed up in their finest formal wear and danced to the music of Joe Murphy and his orchestra. Anson himself chaperoned the ball.
The day was a joint effort between the school’s vocational guidance department and steel plant’s industrial relations department. The program was developed to show local high school students what Dosco was and the employment opportunities available there. It also familiarized managers of the steel plant with the potential of prospective employees.
At one luncheon general manager C.M. Anson said he hoped that Dosco Academy Day would help more people
appreciate the extent and importance of Dosco’s operations in the local community. He said,
“We hope, as well, to influence you to take up engineering or other employment classifications necessary to the management and operation of such an enterprise,” said Anson. “My presence here for some 30 years convinces me that the brains, facilities and ambitions of the people in Cape Breton, and the Maritimes, are as good as any. It is time we stopped exporting Maritime brains to other parts of the country.”
In 1956 Sydney Academy Principle, Dr. G.G. Campbell, addressed the Dosco Day luncheon. He reported that 32 of the first class of Dosco Academy Day had attended university.
In fact, Peter M. Power, an early product of Dosco Academy Day, also addressed the luncheon. He was then employed as a metallurgical engineer at the steel plant. He considered “Dosco Academy Day to be a big day for the students because it revealed the company’s support of classroom activities and gave young people an opportunity to appreciate, how much management and how much ability was required for success. Revealing his own thinking on the matter and explaining how he had taken up employment with Dosco, he said employment with Dosco during former vacations had helped him to eventually select an occupation that he now considers the right one.
“I selected permanent employment
at Sydney because I wanted to help the company in the part of the country that helped me. I believe science is coming into its own in a big way and that the opportunities here are greater and more extensive.”
Dosco Academy Day continued at the steel plant as late as 1964. It is unclear when the practice stopped, but the time and investment the mangers at the steel plant put into recruiting students of Sydney Academy was substantial.
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“My presence here for some 30 years convinces me that the brains, facilities and ambitions of the people in Cape Breton, and the Maritimes, are as good as any. It is time we stopped exporting Maritime brains to other parts of the country.”
General manager C.M. Anson