Frank Stronach paid a visit to George Brown College last month. Usually billionaires tend to visit places such as the University of Toronto or York, but Stronach chose George Brown to highlight the importance of the trades in our economy, an importance often overlooked in favour of more prestigious professions such as law and medicine.
"The college has a long and proud tradition of educating for skilled trades," says Nancy Sherman, the dean of the college’s Centre for Construction and Engineering Technologies. "We regularly have information sessions and we can fill a classroom of 50 to 100 with people interested in getting into a trade."
Sherman says for a program like heating and air conditioning, there are "a couple of hundred" people on the waiting list every January and September, with a current limit of 100 to 150.
This is just the tip of the trades and apprenticeships iceberg in Ontario though. She says there are about 120,000 apprenticeships in 160 trades across the province.
For Stronach’s talk, some of Sherman’s students made a solid aluminum block to present to him, in honour of his own first assignment as a tool and die apprentice just blocks from the college’s Casa Loma campus.
"He was very proud of his education as a tradesman," Sherman says of Stronach’s talk, for which he had an audience of about 250 mostly students, but also including other trades luminaries such as Tridel CEO Leo Delzotto. "He thought that everybody should work at some point with their hands."
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nancy Sherman