New mining program at Sudbury high school guaranteed to rock
It's a program at École Secondaire MacDonald-Cartier (ESMC) that a few students will certainly dig.
The Sudbury high school has launched a new co-op placement, a Mining Specialist Major program, for students interested in getting first-hand knowledge about the mining industry.
"With the specialist high school major in the mining sector, we need to place every student in the mining sector or mining-related field so all of the students involved will need at least two credits to do this by the end fo their grade 12," said ESMC coop teacher Michel Bélanger.
According to Bélanger, the choice to launch a mining major was obvious for the school.
"Sudbury is the mining basin and we have a lot of the expertise, worldwide expertise actually, and we have mining giants here such as Vale and Glencore as well as several junior companies. We also having mining equipment specialists, people who supply the mines .... so we have it all here in our Sudbury basin so the choice was quite obvious. We need a major because we know our students, once they graduate, will get several job opportunities in this field," he explained.
"The idea of creating this was to introduce the students to all the possibilities that are out there in terms of the workforce. Whether it be health and safety, whether it be heavy duty mechanics, electricity or any type of energy, it's really to open up all those facets and make the students aware that there are several possibilities," said guidance counselor Ron Poulin.
The first cohort of students registered for the program back in September and registration is already underway for the second and third cohorts.
Poulin says there have been a lot of misconceptions about the industry and students are learning there is more to mining than just the traditional underground work with maybe a pick axe.
"They (students) don't necessarily come in and say I want a career in mining, it's always 'I'm not sure what I want to do yet,' right, so my job is to more a less present their interests, what they're passionate about and to show them ya you just don't have to be a heavy duty mechanic to work in the mines or you don't have to go in engineering only to work in the mines. There's other possibilities," he said.
All of the students go through interviews with Bélanger. After a series of a questions, they try and pinpoint what puts a smile on their face, where they find a future career and go from there.
"Some say I don't know what I want to do sir and I tell them 'hey, it's normal, we've all been there," he smiled.
Former student, alumnus Stephane Bélanger works in the mining field now and says a program like that would have been helpful to him and his classmates at the time
"It certainly would have opened my eyes to a few of the diverse industries that mining does tough. Mining touches every single discipline you can think of, from accounting to environmental to geological to engineering, even construction. Construction underground, it touches every single facet you can think of and that would have opened my eyes to it certainly," he said.
The former student imagines a course like this would have been very popular with his classmates and believes it'll have no problem in finding interested recruits.
"I think it would give you a step up so you can at least understand the basic inputs to mining, right," he added. "Everyone knows mining, you're underground, you bring up some material and it makes something but at least you get the basic idea of how to get underground, the pit mines and how to extract the ore from the ground," he added.
The mining supply sector, for example, according to Mine Connect, has more than 23,000 people working in it across Northern Ontario.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
'I have the will to live': N.B. woman needs double lung transplant
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
The kids from 'Mrs. Doubtfire are all SUPER grown up now, and we're not OK
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
Police officer hit by driver of fleeing vehicle in Toronto
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
Boeing is on the verge of launching astronauts aboard new capsule, the newest entry to space travel
It’s the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule with a crew on board, a pair of NASA pilots who will check out the spacecraft during the test drive and a weeklong stay at the space station.
Britney Spears 'home and safe' after paramedics responded to an incident at the Chateau Marmont, source tells CNN
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Suter scores late goal, clinches series for Canucks
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
A Chinese driver is praised for helping reduce casualties in a highway collapse that killed 48
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
TD worst-case scenario more likely after drug money laundering allegations: analyst
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.