By Catherine Szabo
Students from across Alberta have put down their notebooks and pens in favour of hammers, wrenches, curling irons, measuring cups and computer mouses over the past two months.
Practical and applied arts students in the Lloydminster area gathered in Vermilion in late April to compete in the regional event for Skills Canada, a nationwide event that promotes work in the skilled trades and technologies. From that first event, both Lloydminster Comprehensive High School and Holy Rosary High School were able to send healthy rosters of students who qualified for provincials.
Regarded as the Olympics for the trades, Lloydminster will be represented by the six students – five from Lloyd Comp and one from Holy Rosary – who won gold in their respective events in Edmonton, sending them to the national event in Quebec City from May 31 to June 1.
“You’re always hoping that you’re teaching them the right thing and that they will do well,” said Don Yusep, the design and drafting teacher at Lloyd Comp. “But you get kids from all across the province, you’re competing with the best kids from all across the province so you never know how your kids are going to stack up against those other kids from the other schools.”
Yusep teaches Grade 12 students Dylan Dunsmore and Cody Burton, who competed in architectural CAD and mechanical CAD respectively.
He’s not surprised that his students medaled in the drafting event – both are meticulous and keep their drawings within the rules, Yusep said.
“You have to be creative yet practical,” Dunsmore said. While he competed in architectural CAD – planning floorplans for houses – he enjoys mechanical drafting as well, and will go to university for a mechanical engineering degree.
“For the house layout it has to be different, but it has to be something that somebody would want to buy,” he continued. “It has to be something that someone could also live in. It can’t just be this crazy outlandish house that nobody would ever want to live in, but it has to be nice and useable.”
The competition was spread over two days, and in the combined 10 hours, competitors were required to complete a number of tasks. The first day, Dunsmore was given plans for “probably the most awkward foundation you can think of” with specific requirements for the house. The second day, he worked with elevations, electrical plans and floor plans.
Burton, on the other hand, was asked to design a gearbox with a specific incoming and outgoing RPM, and then to build a pocketknife, microtool device.
Neither knew what to expect when they got there.
“Like with anything, you kind of set standards going in, just thinking about it, but when you get there it’s totally different,” Dunsmore said. “It’s way harder than you think it’s going to be.”
Burton remembered sitting down and realizing he was being asked to make a gear, something he hadn’t concentrated on before.
“You got in there and you were like, ‘Uh-oh,’” he remembered.
With just over a week before they board the plane for Quebec City, both are still working in their classes, brushing up on skills that a “scope document” suggests they might be tested on at nationals.
“It’s a challenge,” said Burton, who isn’t sure what he’ll do for post-secondary, though mechanical drafting is obviously an option. “When I’m sitting down at the computer thinking, my mind is just going to town, thinking, ‘This is so much fun.’ I just really enjoy doing it. It’s awesome.”
Their competition at provincials was good, Dunsmore said, adding he thought another student might take the gold. Yusep said he was happy for his students, though since he’s “sort of a laid-back guy,” his reaction is low key.
However, this is the second time in a row Alan Griffith, a Lloyd Comp communication production technology teacher, has had students in provincials, and his reaction was a little different.
“Chris (Lorenz) and Mitch (Revering) did really well last year, we thought they might have been medal contenders and they fell just short of that last year,” Griffith said. “So when we were going through the awards ceremony this year, I knew that they had a chance, that they had produced something that was really good.
“When they won, I was absolutely beside myself, I was so excited for them. So it’s thrilling, and I’m excited to go. It’s going to be great to see that level of competition in Quebec.”
In addition to Lorenz and Revering, who competed as a team in TV and video production, Griffith also teaches Travis Newbury, who competed in website production.
Newbury and Lorenz are taking a year off before continuing their education and Revering is going to Lakeland College before he decides what career path to take, but all three said their respective trades are still on the table for a possible future.
Since they’d been at the competition last year together, Lorenz and Revering went back this year “with their heads on straight that way,” Lorenz said.
Like the other skills areas, they had 10 hours over two days to complete the project, a video on creativity and problem solving in the trades.
“They basically just make you do basic editing – they want to see how you can make it flow and how you can tell a story,” Revering said. “They don’t really care if you can make your titles spin in a circle or anything like that. They don’t want to be distracted by gimmicks, they want to see if you’re actually good.”
While they just need to continue to build their editing and storytelling skills in preparation for nationals, Newbury has been digging up books and online resources with Griffith to learn the additional skills he’ll need to showcase at nationals.
Since this was his first time at provincials, he wasn’t sure exactly what to expect.
When he got there, he was given material – photos and text content – to build a website, including html coding and design, from the ground up.
“I was a little bit nervous at first, because I thought the competition I was in was a little challenging, but when I got there and started doing it, it didn’t seem that hard at all, because it’s a bunch of sitting in front of a computer, so it was easy for me,” Newbury said.
Provincials came pretty easy as well for Trevor Charron, a Grade 12 student at Holy Rosary – he said regionals made him more nervous; provincials was just an extension of that, and he just had to remind himself to stay calm.
Both Comp teachers noted that their students always work down to the wire in the timed events, and Charron is no different, said Kevin Bender, an industrial arts teacher at Holy Rosary.
“He’s a perfectionist,” Bender said. “So he’s really focused on the small details that make a big difference, and I think that sets him apart from the other competitors, because he’s just so meticulous with everything.
“He still works on a very strict timeline, he’s very cautious of the time, but if he does have any extra time in any of the areas, he spends it on perfecting what he’s already done. He would never finish early. He would never say, ‘Well, I’m done, and I’m just going to sit back for the last half hour.’ He goes the extra distance to make sure that everything’s perfect.”
Charron, who has been working with an electrician company for the last few months, was introduced to the work when he previously took a 50-hour course with Bender.  During his competition, he was expected to wire lights, plug-ins, smoke detectors and a panel, along with bending some PVC pipe.
“I love the hands-on kind of work,” Charron said. “It allows you to have a bit of creativity in what you do, and you can see what you did when you’re done, you can turn the light switch  on and the lights work, the plug-ins work, that kind of thing, so just knowing that you made something like that work.”
This is Holy Rosary’s third year competing in the competition; Lloyd Comp has been going for the past 18 years. Bender was previously involved with Skills when he taught in Edmonton, and brought that passion to the Border City.
Even though he’s familiar with the competition, it’s still a little stressful for him.
“It’s nerve-wracking, the fact that you can watch them, but you can’t help them,” Bender said.
“You’re not allowed to give any input at all. They have no contact with the public, they just need to demonstrate what they know.”
All six students will be brushing up on their skills before heading to Quebec; their teachers have been accessing outside tools, including instructors from Lakeland College and online resources, to help prepare them.
“When it comes down to it, as a teacher, the best situation you can be in, is when you have students who are truly passionate in your subject areas, and who are just devouring learning opportunities, and what to learn more, and are asking for more, so that’s a great opportunity as a teacher to have kids like that,” Griffith said.