Article from July 16th 2011:
LETHBRIDGE HERALD – STIRLING
kmay@lethbridgeherald.com
Kenton Buffalo pounds a spike into place as Tyler Ward, Shayne Moonias and Kendall Cardinal work on back filling ties as part of a program training young men from Saddle Lake and Samson Cree First Nations to become certified railway trackmen Friday morning at the Galt Historic Railway Park north of Stirling. Herald photo by Ian Martens
Jarred Johnson tips his white hard hat as he walks along the railroad, calling out instructions and encouragement to the muscled young men prying out thick, rusted spikes and driving new ones into both sides of the track.
As his community mourns the loss of a five-year-old boy killed in his sleep by stray gunfire earlier this week, 17-year-old Johnson is trying, quite literally, to set his life on a new track and represent Hobbema’s Samson Cree First Nation in a way that will make his family proud. As track supervisor, Johnson is also the youngest of 20 men from the four bands in Hobbema, south of Edmonton, as well as the nearby Saddle Lake First Nation, who are training to become certified railway trackmen at Galt Historic Railway Park north of Stirling.
“We’ll set a good example,” Johnson said, a wide smile gleaming below his safety goggles. “If we can do this, anyone can.”
The five-week training program, run by the Edmonton-based On Track Railway Training Institute of Canada (ORTIC) and sponsored by the federal government, seeks out unemployed, often troubled, First Nations youth and teaches them how to work on the railway. Eighty per cent of the program’s graduates go on to find high-paying jobs on the freight railways – an industry in high demand across Western Canada. The program has been running for four years across the country and this month marks the first time the railway park has hosted the trainees.
The park gets free work on its tracks around the railway museum, and the students get valuable work experience that could later earn them $1,500 a week, after taxes, early in their careers.
“It’s very hard work but at the end of the day it pays off when you look back and say, ‘this piece of track belongs to me. This piece of the world is mine,’” said instructor Eduardo Alustiza, who said students don’t have to work on the rails later on. The skills they learn here give them a “big balloon of transferrable skills,” he says, leading some to careers in welding or heavy equipment operating trades. He hopes to run another training camp at the Galt railway park later this summer.
Alustiza shares tales of once-delinquent now-successful youth who had a natural talent for railway work helped by the hand-eye co-ordination skills they gleaned playing video games. Though the training camp doesn’t always start smoothly, with some disruptive youth being sent home only to return repentant and twice as hard-working the next day, Alustiza can’t hide his pride at having a hand in helping his students turn their lives around. “That’s my paycheque at the end of the day,” he said, holding his hand over his heart. “You can’t put a price on that.”
Jay Littlechild of the Ermineskin Cree Nation can take long hours of manual labour through all types of weather. It’s being away from his wife and five children that makes training difficult. The 35-year-old calls them every day, telling them he’s doing this so they’ll all have a good future. “We try to keep our minds off home,” he said. “It’s steady work; the hours just fly by.”
Littlechild can’t wait to return home with his certification papers in hand. He’s hopeful his efforts will make a difference to a community that for years has been tainted by drug abuse and gang violence. The community of Hobbema held a wake Friday for five-year-old Ethan Yellowbird of Samson who was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting while he slept in his bed Monday. “This will take a little heat off what’s been happening back home,” Littlechild said. “We all started here together and we’re going to finish together.”
The group of young men has grown close over the past week, and they joke with each other as they learn how to safely use heavy-duty equipment like spike mauls and clawbars and replace railway ties weighing 100 pounds each.
“All of us bonded,” said Ermineskin’s Joe Stoney. If he weren’t here on the tracks, working as a first aid officer, Stoney doesn’t know what he’d be doing. “Probably something illegal,” he quips, then shrugs.
“I’m here because I want a better life for myself, my wife and my kids,” Stoney said. “This is an opportunity for all of us to make a change in our lives.”
