Marty LeDoux, Millwright

To get started

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"To be a millwright you need four years of an apprenticeship. To get your apprenticeship you should have a mechanical background. I apprenticed originally as a machinist for another company and that helped me get my apprenticeship in this one."

"It's good to have either pre-employment* before you get your apprenticeship or a few years of mechanical experience."

*Note: A pre-employment program provides you with entry-level skills to help prepare you for employment. You will be introduced to the industry and the apprenticeship program. You will gain practical experience using various tools and safety regulations will likely be emphasized.

Workplace images

Where I work

HudBay Minerals Inc. is an interesting company because they do everything right from the beginning to the end - from hauling ore from underground to processing it, to shipping it out in ingots as pure copper, gold and zinc.

The working environment varies from day to day. One day we might be working outside on a nice sunny day and the next day we could be working in tight quarters inside a dark room. I have been to the bottom of the deepest mine shaft and to the top of a 900-foot high smokestack.

Physical effort

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"A millwright carries, on average, 10 to 30 pounds of tools on them throughout the course of a day. There's a lot of working off ladders, crouching down in tight positions, working on your back, working on your knees, working at heights tied off to a fall restraint.

"Or in the other instance, where we're working in holes where we have a retrieval system to pull us out if anything may happen. So it could be physically demanding at times."

Equipment – old and new

Some of the equipment we use dates back to the 1930s and some is the most cutting edge technology in the mining industry today.

Our tools have to go hand-in-hand with the equipment. If we are working on an older piece of equipment, then we need more traditional tools while the newer equipment takes a lot more delicate instrumentation. We have newer instruments for hydraulics - there are a lot of gauges and sensors that we install when we are troubleshooting. We also use finer equipment like micrometers and callipers.

Many skills needed

My job requires a lot of research and reading. I have to journal and document, calculate, measure, and read blueprints. There are times when I need to get creative. It takes time to order parts so sometimes I have to make something on the spot.

I use people skills all the time. Oral communication is very important, but sometimes when it's very loud my co-workers and I need to communicate with gestures and hand signals to ensure safety.

Continuous learning

There are learning opportunities constantly on this job. New technology comes out every day and often you might be the first person to ever have worked on a certain piece of equipment.

When there's nobody you can ask for help, you become the one with the wisdom in that area, once you have discovered a way to master the problem.

Tightly knit community

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"I grew up in Flin Flon, Manitoba. It's more or less bush, rocks and lakes up here. It was a great place to grow up.

"It's a single industry mining town so it was a pretty tight knit community. Everybody more or less worked at the same place. All your friends grow up and work at the same place. And a lot of sports, hunting and fishing - the outdoorsy stuff."

Parents went to college

Both of my parents went to college. My dad took pre-employment training for industrial mechanic and worked for HudBay as a general labourer for his entire career.

My mom went to Brandon University to become a teacher. Once she got her degree she worked for a while and then landed a good job with Manitoba Hydro working in the office in Flin Flon. She's been there ever since and now she's the head clerk.

Enjoys travel

I don't go out with the boys very often anymore. I am devoted to being a full-time dad and enjoy spending time with my wife and 16-month old daughter.

I love to travel and have been around the world to many different countries. I've got my wife into travelling too, so usually our reward is saving up a little bit of money and going on a trip.

Personal hero

My personal hero is Lyle Odelain who used to play defence for the Montreal Canadians. He was number 24 and that's the number I've picked for hockey. He came up to Flin Flon a few times because his dad and his brother coached the Yorkton Terriers out of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.

I don't know why I liked him so much. He liked to stir the pot a bit on the ice. He was my favourite hockey player even though he wasn't the best one on the ice.

Loves Manitoba

The first thing I love about Manitoba has got to be the lakes. I love fishing. I have an ice shack in the winter. In the summertime I borrow my dad's boat to go out on the water.

I also love the fact that Manitoba is a very spread out province and you have to drive two or three hours before you get to another town. I like the remoteness. Nothing is too close together. Everything has a hometown feel to it.

On a typical day

On a typical day I wake up at about 5:30 am. Once I get to work and put on my coveralls, I take the shuttle to our department where I talk to my supervisor and get my jobs for the day. If there's anything out of the ordinary, I will get different tools and then go off to do my regular checks.

I try to get my morning stuff out of the way so there is time for the scheduled work and any unexpected breakdowns in the afternoon.

At about 3:30, I'll come back to the shop, clean up my tools, put my hardhat away and wait for my shuttle to go home.

Starting out

When I was first starting out, I wanted to get into any trade that would let me use my head. As a labourer I was doing the same repetitious work day in and day out and that wasn't really my cup of tea.

I watched a few machinists at our local shop and the work interested me, but I also knew a few millwrights and I liked the variation in their routine. Some days they would work on hydraulics and the next day they might work on a pump. It was all mechanical work but always something different.

Problem solving

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"Problem solving is a daily thing. My end of the trade is a lot of troubleshooting. When you're looking at a piece of equipment and it looks the same whether it's broken or it's running in pristine condition, you have to think what the equipment does and why it's doing what it's not supposed to be doing and go from there.

"There's a lot of thinking on your feet, especially when it comes to production. You want the equipment running and you want to be done fast. Time is money, really."

Uses computer regularly

We use the computer on a daily basis.

When we need a certain part, we have to look through the manuals to find the part and part number. Then we use the computer network to find out where the part is in the warehouse and how many we have left.

Flexible time off

I work eight hours a day, five days a week, with weekends off. They are pretty flexible at the mine for time off. If you need a day off you can make a trade with someone working different shifts and days.

The flexibility is definitely there for getting time off and the employers are pretty good at giving you the vacation time you want and even special leaves, if necessary.

Blowing stuff up

During the first 14 months of my apprenticeship I worked underground.

On one of the jobs, we had liners to change in the crusher. The liners were so badly beaten that the only way we could get them out was to blow them up!

We got the okay from our supervisor, and since one of the industrial mechanics on the crew had a blasting ticket we were able to throw a little bit of dynamite between a rock and a hard place and boom! The job was done.

Strong work ethic

I'm such an easygoing guy, I get along with everybody. I know how to have fun but be serious at the same time.

The fact that I show up for work on time every day and do a good job showed my supervisors that I am a serious worker. That's how I got my apprenticeship in the first place.

Depend on each other

There is definitely collaboration between the departments because they depend on one another.

If the mill goes down for repairs, they will let us know and then we can use that time for maintenance on the conveyor belt system.

The departments go hand-in-hand. The communication goes both ways.

Safety equipment

For safety equipment, we wear work boots, but these aren't just steel-toed boots. They have a metatarsal guard, so you have steel under your boot on your toes and right up the ankle, but the boots aren't actually very heavy.

We also wear fire-protective coveralls, respirators, safety glasses, hard hats with headlamps, and latex gloves underneath our work gloves (to protect against dermatitis and rashes). We work at great heights so we wear fall protection. When we work around roof vents, the conditions can be very icy, so we always make sure to be tied off.

Work/Home balance

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"The balance between work life and home life could get a little tough at times. If there's overtime I make sure it's planned overtime. So all in all it's not too hard to balance."

"I definitely don't worry about work when I'm at home. Hudson Bay is an around the clock operation and there are a dozen other industrial mechanics at work while I'm not. Somebody is always there so it's not something I really worry about."

Dad helped me pick

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"The person who helped the most along the way would be my dad. Even though he was a general labourer he worked in the trades shop as a crane operator.

"When I decided that I wanted to take a trade, he brought me into the shop and showed me all the different trades - electrical, mechanical, heavy duty, machining.

"Machining was the one that kind of piqued my interest at the time so that's the one I applied for in college. So it was my dad who showed me which trades were which and that's how I got to pick."

Hired out of high school

My parents were glad that I got a job at HudBay right out of high school but I wasn't content just being a general labourer. I always wanted to use my brains a little more than my back.

So, I decided to take pre-employment training as a machinist. I took a leave of absence to do that and then came back to Hudson Bay as a general labourer until an opportunity came up for an industrial mechanic apprenticeship. Since it was a related trade, I put my name in and here I am today.

Learn in high school

Some of the job skills needed for my trade can be learned in high school, like machine shop or a cooperative vocational education program.

It would also be pretty tough to do my job without having physics and math. I don't think I would have got my apprenticeship without my machining background and I could never have gotten that without going to college first.

Greatest accomplishment

I think my greatest accomplishment in my career was getting my Red Seal Interprovincial Ticket* for Industrial Mechanic and becoming a journeyman.

It was four years of not only working full-time but also going to school for two months out of the year. That was a lot of intense learning in the apprenticeship.

*Note: For more information about the Red Seal trades in Manitoba, see Apprenticeship Branch in Useful Links.

Don’t be afraid

My advice to kids is: Don't be scared of the trades even if you're not really mechanically-inclined. That doesn't mean that you can't learn the trade.

I wouldn't have called myself mechanically-inclined before I got into the trades, but that's what your apprenticeship is for. You start at square one and you have four years to learn the trade.

It’s a dirty job

The one thing I'd like to change about my trade or my industry is that I would like to work in a cleaner environment. In the mining industry there are times we have to crawl into a dirty, greasy hole to get the job done.

We do have white suits and we take proper precautions to make sure things are done safely. I guess we can't all work in a nice clean shop all the time!

Constant improvement

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"There are a lot of skills that I'd like to learn and improve on. Our trade of industrial mechanic is more or less a jack-of-all-trades.

"At times we're welders, we're machinists, we're electricians, carpenters, automotive heavy-duty mechanics. We're a little bit of everything, so you can never say you've totally mastered one.

"There are a lot of things that I'd like to be better at. Electrical, welding - these are all things I can't say that I'm an expert at but there's constant improvement."

Take another trade

I am quite happy with the course I have followed. I would like to eventually take an electrical trade because electrical and mechanical skills go hand-in-hand.

When you troubleshoot, there are times when the problem is not mechanical, it's electrical and if you had two different trades you'd be a lot more likely to know what the problem is.

Become a supervisor

I would definitely like to be the guy out of the crew that has the wisdom. That just comes with experience. Five years from now I would like to become a supervisor. Hopefully, by then, I will know enough about the trade and become a candidate for that.

I could also see myself going back to school to get my trades' instructor certificate and teaching trade school.

Hopes for my daughter

The only difference I could see myself making in the world is being able to raise my daughter right. I'm kind of set in my ways. I've got my house and my wife and kids and that's about as far as I'll probably go.

I have a long career to work yet, but I could definitely see my daughter doing something to help the world. Hopefully, she'll be a doctor one day and look after her dad!

Job Market Info

The links below take you to federal and regional government information on employment, education, salary ranges and long range prospects for this career.

The official title for Marty's occupation is "Industrial Millwright" and its NOC* code is 7311.

Manitoba Job Futures

Working in Canada Career Research Tool

*Each occupation has an official name and unique number called the 'National Occupation Classification' code or 'NOC'.

Education

Useful High School subjects

- Math
- Machine Shop
- Mechanics
- Physical Education
- Blueprint Reading

*Source: JobFutures.ca

For those out of school, Adult Learning Centres can help you get or upgrade your high school diploma, including adding subjects that are required for work or further education. All Manitobans are normally entitled to four free courses.

Below are links to various programs and courses that will lead you on the path to a career as an Industrial Millwright:

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship Branch

Colleges & Universities

University College of the North - The Pas/Thompson

All Programs
Apprenticeship Training - page 28 of the pdf
Industrial Trades - page 96 of the pdf

Assiniboine Community College - Brandon

School of Trades and Technology

Winnipeg Technical College

Industrial Maintenance Technology

Skills

Most employers who advertise are looking for workers who have the following experience and skills:

Experience: 3-5 years

Specific Skills:
Repair or replace defective machinery parts. Detect and troubleshoot irregularities and malfunctions. Perform routine maintenance work on machinery.

Additional Skills:
Read and interpret blueprints, drawings and specifications.

Essential Skills:
Oral communication, working with others, problem solving, job task planning and organizing, writing, reading text, critical thinking, decision making, continuous learning and numeracy.

Source: Working in Manitoba Career Research Tool

Professional Resources

Forward North (Northern Manitoba Sector Council)
Forward North works on behalf of the Northern Manitoba Sector Council, which includes seven mining, forestry and hydro companies that operate in northern Manitoba. Forward North helps match these companies' needs for skilled workers with trained people able to fill those jobs.

Mining Association of Manitoba
Represents all operating mines in the province as well as most firms conducting mineral exploration projects in Manitoba

Related Careers

Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics (NOC 7312)

Industrial Instrument Technicians and Mechanics (NOC 2243)

Industrial Electrician (NOC 7242)

Mechanical Engineer (Plant Engineer/Maintenance Engineer) (NOC 2132)