Trading the office for the forest
Former business grad fell in love with nature while planting trees
Shayna Mason saw the forest for the trees one summer, and fell in love with the great outdoors.
She was a university business student planting trees in B.C. when she became enamoured with nature. Now several years later, after a short career in the financial sector, she looks back with delight on her decision to forgo the office for the woods.
“When I was planting trees during my third year at the University of Northern B.C. (UNBC), I was not an outdoorsy person and hadn’t been camping. But I loved it up there, and this took me in a different direction in my life.”
The 27-year-old, now a forestry student at the University of Alberta, has won the second annual skills award for aboriginal youth from the Forest Products Association of Canada, to be presented on Thursday.
The $2,500 award is targeted at people from 18 to 30 who are enrolled in an apprenticeship program, college or university, and who are First Nations, Métis or Inuit, with strong academic standing and commitment to a career in the forest sector.
Mason returned to school to finish her business degree at UNBC in Prince George, then worked in finance for a few years.
“I wanted to make sure that going into forestry was what I really wanted to do, and I ended up coming to a crossroads in my life,” she said. “So I quit my job and went back to school. I wasn’t really happy in finance, so I decided that I was at the point in my life where if I was going to do something else, I should do it right now.”
She began her new studies in forestry at UNBC, but transferred to the U of A a year ago and will complete her degree in Edmonton.
Mason is from the Tsimshian First Nation in the coastal region around Prince Rupert, but she hasn’t been back to visit relatives at the remote village of Kitkatla since she was about 11.
Her parents met in Terrace, and she grew up in Prince George.
“My parents were athletic but not outdoorsy, so we never went hiking or camping, we were too busy with volleyball, soccer and baseball,” she said.
So far Mason has worked as a student in the forests of the Slave Lake and Hinton areas, doing silviculture — an area that has some irony for her.
“I was helping companies run their planting and herbicide programs, and doing block layouts ... and working with tree planters,” she said.
But the back-breaking work of actually planting trees is behind her now that she is in a supervisory role.
“What I am doing now is a lot easier than the planting that I did.”