Source: sootoday.com
Men and women looking for good-paying secure careers are being encouraged to enter the skilled trades
Ashton Brown is winning recognition for her work as a skilled tradeswoman.
Brown, who’s a Red Seal plumber employed by the Sault’s DNM Mechanical Group, took the Empower Mentor award at the annual Women in Skilled Trades Awards held at Quattro last week.
“I’ve inspired other women to get into the trades,” Brown told SooToday.
One of those women is Reanna Dunn, a first-year plumbing apprentice working for McLeod Bros. Mechanical Inc.
Dunn received the Outstanding Female Apprentice Award at Thursday’s awards ceremony.
The awards are organized by Sault Community Career Centre and supported by several sponsors.
“I got to work with Reanna for about six months when she did a co-op with us at DNM. I know her as a close personal friend. She was really inspired to get into the trades when she saw that I was doing it, and she knew she could do it too,” Brown said.
A graduate of Superior Heights, Brown, now 21, credits a high school shop teacher for getting her thinking about a career in skilled trades.
“It started with my wood shop teacher, Mr. Parent. I took a wood shop class, and I fell in love with it. At first I wanted to do carpentry,” Brown said.
“But then, I had an amazing co-op teacher, Mr. Muto, who said ‘I can get you a co-op in HVAC, and I can get you a co-op in plumbing,’ so I actually did both.”
She said she loves her work in commercial plumbing.
“I really like working with my hands,” Brown said.
“At the end of the day, once I finish a job, I just have this wholeness, this feeling that I’ve completed something. And then I look at Trinity Towers and the Legion building. I get to say ‘I did that.’ I worked on those job sites.”
“At 21, that’s a really big accomplishment,” Brown said.
She’s grateful to those who have helped her along in her career path.
“I am really proud but I also have to thank my journeymen. It’s my journeymen who took the chance on me. They taught me when I was 17 and very green. They took me under their wing,” Brown said.
She was profiled by SooToday when she was a high school student doing a co-op with Huckson’s Water Depot in 2022.
Other winners from this year’s Women in Skilled Trades Awards ceremony include Ulannah Sarrasin, a level one carpenter apprentice with Sal-Dan Developments.
Sarrasin won the Rising Star Award.
Paula Trainor, Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board experiential learning lead, won the Industry Champion Award.
Men and women looking for good-paying secure careers are being encouraged to enter the skilled trades.
One in six job openings are projected to be in skilled trades-related occupations by 2034, according to the Ontario government.
Only five to six per cent of people in core hands-on trades in Ontario are women.
Representation of women is lowest in welding, carpentry, and heavy-duty mechanics.
“They’re an untapped, valuable resource of talent,” Xylene Tandoc, Sault Community Career Centre program coordinator, told SooToday in August.
The centre delivers the Supporting Women in Skilled Trades Project, a program established in 2025 and funded by the federal government through Employment and Social Development Canada.
“We help them succeed in their apprenticeship journey,” Tandoc said.
Women bring their own unique qualities to the skilled trades, Brown said after Thursday’s awards ceremony.
“We have a different viewpoint on a lot of things. We might look at a project and say ‘there’s an easier way to do this’ or ‘that way is more efficient.’”
Brown encourages both young women and men to look into skilled trades training.
“Males and females. We need both,” she said.
