Women hammered out the path
As a 19-year-old woman during the Second World War, Alice Smith worked at a shipyard in a field dominated by men.
“I became very adept at using the hammer and other tools, so much so that when some new gentlemen were hired, the boss would send them over to get ‘trained by Alice,’” she said.
Smith, 95, now lives at the Village at Smith Creek in West Kelowna, and on Friday afternoon she and another former tradeswoman, Clara Savard, hosted three young women from the Women in Trades Training program at Okanagan College to discuss what it is like being a woman in the trades.
“I think it’s really meaningful for the young women to meet these original women in trades that were doing it before there were any women in trades, certainly before there were any government programs to help women get careers in trades,” said Nancy Darling, program administrator for the Women in Trades Training program. “I wanted them to think about how different it would have been for these women to be in trades than it is for us right now.”
Smith’s advice for women wanting to get into the trades is to “go for it.”
“Whatever it is, you know you can do it,” she said. “A lot of times you don’t think it’s something you can do, but you can always try and when you try, you find out you can do it.”
When Savard’s husband was shipped overseas during the war, she got a job with Air Canada fixing aircraft.
“It was during the war years that women had many new opportunities to work in vocations that traditionally were male dominated,” said Savard, now in her 90s. “Working at the air base at Air Canada was the best job I ever had.”
Brooke Turko, a trades student at Okanagan College specializing in automotive mechanics, said she enjoyed hearing about Smith and Savard’s experiences as tradeswomen.
“It’s really inspiring, because I know it’s hard even nowadays for women in trades — I can’t imagine what it was like back then,” she said.
The Women in Trades program at OC exposes students to a wide variety of trades and allows them to discover which field is right for them.
“I like that I learn a little bit of everything, and I can apply it to everyday life,” said Martina Karuza, who recently got hired by a local sheet metal company.