Apprentice rises through baking ranks
Jerrika Durocher-Barthel has parlayed her love for cooking and baking into a full-time career.
“I don’t see it as work,” said the 22-year-old. “I am learning every day and I love what I am doing.”
The young apprentice baker from the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement has enjoyed cooking and baking since she was old enough to help out in her family’s kitchen.
“I was very close with my grandmother, so I was in the kitchen with her, all the time.”
She started turning her passion into a career in 2011, when she applied and was accepted to a camp cook program at neighbouring Frog Lake First Nations. For three months, Durocher-Barthel gained skills and experience as a cook, through the jobreadiness program sponsored by Human Service — Alberta Works, Frog Lake First Nations and Métis funding.
“I had a very positive and amazing teacher,” DurocherBarthel said.
She graduated with “outstanding student” status and started working with Primco Dene as a dining room assistant at the Wolf’s Den Camp in Cold Lake. Commuting by bus to the camp and staying for two to three weeks was hard at first, but DurocherBarthel said she has grown to like it and made close friends.
She soon began training other new dining room staff and later asked if she could move into the kitchen.
Her first tasks included making 2,500 sandwiches a day.
She continued to be given more responsibilities and eventually earned an apprenticeship spot as a baker.
She plans to attend the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology this fall.
“I have a good teacher and I am really grateful for her,” she said of the woman she is apprenticing under.
So far, cake decorating has been Durocher-Barthel’s favourite part of baking.
“Ultimately I would like to get my (journeyman) papers and move into wedding cakes and full-time cake decorating, but I am learning so much in the camp right now. I love it,” she said.
Susan Barthel is director of employment and training for the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement and is also Durocher-Barthel’s mom. Barthel partners with the community, provincial and federal governments and industry to work with youth and other job seekers, training and readying them for the workforce.
She said she has watched her daughter grow in both her career and life experience in her two years working for the Primco Dene camp.
“Camp life has taught her independence and a real sense of teamwork,” she said.
Seeing both her daughter and many other jobseekers from the Métis Settlement enter job-readiness training in their home community is a “big plus,” Barthel said.
“I see a higher success rate when we do communitybased training, or as close to home as possible.
“If people have to commute back and forth to Bonnyville or Cold Lake, the challenge can be quite difficult,” she said.