According to Skills Canada BC (SCBC): "Labour market statistics estimate that British Columbia will require one million skilled workers and technologists to fill retirement vacancies and support the province’s economic growth over the next 10 years."
Every year Skills Canada holds regional, provincial and national skilled trades and technology competitions in partnership with school districts. This year qathet School District supported 15 students at Skills Canada’s regional competition on Feb 23 in Campbell River at North Island College.
Brooks Secondary School students competed and placed well in the categories of welding, carpentry, auto-mechanics, and culinary arts.
Brooks student Haaken MacLean won gold in the automotive category and will go on to the provincial competition later this year. Ty Hatch won bronze in automotive, Justin Dendewicz won silver in welding, and Lucas Laroche won silver in carpentry. Emily Dunn placed silver in the culinary competition and Mizuto Hiramatsu placed bronze, also in the culinary category.
Students who competed in welding, carpentry and automotive programs were given basic parameters to prepare before competing. The carpentry competition saw students attempt to build a picnic table from scratch. Skills Canada’s regional competition also had applied design skills, engineering and fun technology competitions for some of the qSD younger students.
"There were three grade seven students competing in the gravity car event," said Brooks Secondary School vice principal and careers programs coordinator Tanya Larkin. "This started with classes building gravity cars in January with our applied design skills and technology (ADST) innovator Joel Nordman and Indigenous worker Melvin Mitchell."
According to Skills Canada BC: "The gravity car and race provides students an opportunity to model their designs off of known shapes, test their prototypes and amend their designs."
The student-built car models can only use potential energy from gravity to propel their vehicle.
"There were three grade eight students from Brooks [Secondary] that competed in the spaghetti bridge competition," said Larkin. “They [the students] are given a box of spaghetti, a hot glue gun and a short amount of time to build a bridge that can hold the most amount of weight."
The Skills Canada provincial competition will be held in Abbotsford in April 2024.
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