Several industries and trades set up shop in Fort Saskatchewan on Tuesday to appeal to the next generation of skilled workers. That included Grade 7 student Kalayna Sousa, who hopes to become a mechanic, welder or engineer one day. “My dad’s a mechanic, and I feel like it’d be super fun to do that,” Sousa said Tuesday at the city’s Dow Centennial Centre, where Skills Canada Alberta hosted Skills in the Heartland as part of the national non-profit organization’s Try A Trade program. “I definitely like to do a lot of things. I feel like building things would be super fun.” Students from several area junior and senior high schools attended the career fair, which featured representatives from Keyera, Inter Pipeline, Pembina Pipeline, North West Redwater Partnership, Dow Chemical, Wolf Midstream, Spartan Controls and Mammoet. “We have tons of different things for them to explore,” Victoria Anderson, manager of communications for Skills Canada Alberta, told CTV News Edmonton. Tanya Gardiner, Edmonton branch manager for global heavy-lifting and transportation firm Mammoet, said the fair is important because it exposes students to potential career opportunities. “We’ve been participating the last five or six years,” Gardiner said. “We’ve seen a lot of people, a lot of foot traffic, a lot of kids that wouldn’t otherwise know about cranes and heavy transport.” Aaron Boser, an educational instructor with Spartan Controls, said he hopes the fair will help “plant the seed” and steer youth toward rewarding skilled trades careers. “I’m really excited for these young kids (who can fill) our shoes,” said Boser, a former automation instructor at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. “We need them because they’re a big part of the economy here in Alberta.” With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Miriam Valdes-Carletti
