A big Red Seal deal
Cape Bretoner who became Canada’s first female ironworker now guiding women into trades
SYDNEY, N.S. — Maggie Budden trained to be a cake decorator and ended up becoming Canada’s first female Red Seal ironworker.
With that revelation, it should come as no surprise that the Nova Scotian woman also spent time as a telemarketer, bank teller and Avon products representative. She’s also a justice of the peace and mother to two young children.
Budden, whose maiden name was Horne, spent many years working in western Canada at job sites in the northern Alberta oil patch and in Saskatchewan. But then she met a pipefitter, who was also from Cape Breton, and the two moved back to the East Coast. She now lives near where she grew up on the southside of Boularderie Island.
Today, the 45-year-old Budden is project co-ordinator at the recently opened Sydney, N.S., location of the Office to Advance Women Apprentices (Nova Scotia). Her job is to give support to women interested in obtaining a trade or becoming part of the construction industry.
WHAT TO DO
The irony of that is not lost on Budden, who recalls her late father Murray Horne’s reaction when he heard she wanted to follow in his footsteps and become an ironworker.
“When I graduated from high school I asked my dad, who was a longtime ironworker, about joining the ironworkers and he told me ‘no, no, it’s no place for a woman, go do something else,’ so I did,” recalled Budden. “Then after I got a job as a telemarketer he came home one weekend and asked me how it was going. I told him I wanted to do something else. And he asked, ‘do you still want to be an ironworker?’ I told him that I did and that was the start.”
The next step was to learn to weld. And she did so on an old DC welder in her father’s home shop. Each week when he came home he would
check her progress. Before long she was accompanying him to job sites, the first of which was at the Halifax Casino.
“On my first day on the job I really had no idea what was going on,” admitted Budden.
“My dad stuck me on a grinder and I spent the day all bent over grinding plates. I thought I was going to die, but I survived. I was lucky that my dad worked me up slowly, but eventually I was going up in the air which was extremely nerve-racking. Don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t, because it is.”
RED SEAL
At the time of her apprenticeship, Budden’s sponsoring union, the International Association of Bridge, Structural Ornamental and Reinforcing Ironworkers, local 752, was registering its apprenticeship program with the Nova Scotia government. The result was
that when she completed her apprenticeship and became a journeyperson she also earned the designation as a Red Seal ironworker.
The job trail led Budden to Alberta where she was employed with PCL Construction on its industrial management contractor team. A number of promotions soon followed that included stints as a lay-down area manager, a material and equipment manager and a deficiency co-ordinator.
She admits that while she worked hard to gain a reputation as a solid ironworker, she had a relatively easy journey on the job.
“Other than maybe two guys who said stupid things, I had enormous support, especially from my 460 union brothers and fathers who were so proud of me when I became a journeyperson,” said Budden.
“When I was starting in the
industry a lot of guys were worried that women would totally change the industry, that they wouldn’t be able to joke around like they used to. But it just doesn’t work that way. I can have a joke with a man.”
HELPING OTHERS
With two small children, Budden took a step back from the construction industry about four years ago when she accepted employment as a customer service representative at a local bank.
“I respect all customer service workers, but I wasn’t overly happy with it,” she said.
“Then I heard about a new job. But I already had the bank job, which was secure and steady, so I hummed and hawed over it because construction really was my niche in life.”
The new job was working in the Office to Advance Women Apprentices’ new Sydney office.
“I love it here. I come to work every day being happy to be here,” said Budden.
“And, once this ball gets rolling I know I am going to make a difference in some women’s lives. I am going to give them their independence and that is so important these days.”
One of the goals she is working on, and that is shared by many other individuals and organizations in the province, is to increase the percentage of women working in the trades.
After the organization’s Newfoundland and Labrador office was established in 2009, the percentage of women working in the trades there increased from four per cent to 14 per cent, according to Karen Walsh of the Newfoundland office.
“We were like Nova Scotia is now in that we were prepping for lots of big projects and we were looking to find creative ideas to help women get into the trades in which they were underrepresented,” said Walsh.“There was a need for wraparound supports to keep them involved in their apprenticeships and to help them get their Red Seal, and to work with contractors to break down those barriers for equality inclusion. We’ve now increased the number of women in the trades here to about 14 per cent and we’re also seeing many coming back for a second trade to give themselves a more diverse skill set. Once we realized that Cape Breton was going to have a construction boom of its own, we knew we had to have an office in Cape Breton.”
Walsh said the Office to Advance Women Apprentices also has locations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
CAKE DECORATING
So, what about the cake decorating?
“I obviously didn’t pursue it as a career, but it is interesting so to make a long story short, my father was working on a project at the Point Aconi power plant where he met a man from Scotland,” explained Budden.
“Well, my mother is also from Scotland so the man and his wife would come over for dinner. One night he told me that his sister taught a cake decorating course in Aberdeen and asked if I was interested. I immediately said yes not even thinking about what I was getting into.”
She said while her time in Scotland was a great experience, it couldn’t hold a welding torch to her desire for a career as an ironworker.