Ideas - An Outsider Inside the Trades: Hilary Peach

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

You can’t pay rent with experimental poetry, so Hilary Peach trained as a welder. Twenty-plus years on, she’s now a boiler inspector, poet, and author of an award-winning memoir, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. Peach talks about the joys and contradictions of being an outsider inside the trades. *This episode originally aired on May 1, 2024.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Hilary Peach was a young person passionate about words, but she knew that poetry wasn't going to pay the bills.

For 20 years, she worked as a welder, becoming part of the Boilermakers Union. These days, she's a boiler inspector and a published author of several books, because she never gave up on writing. It's a combination of careers that some people find surprising, but not Hilary. I'm a strong believer that you can have a dual career path, and lots of people in the trades do. There are lots of artists who take up trades. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

It became kind of a dual thing, but I've always been writing. I was very content toiling in obscurity for 35 years. So this book's got a little bit of attention, which is also very nice and kind of unnerving. That book that Hilary Peach is talking about, it's a memoir, one that poetically fuses together the different parts of her working life. It's called Thick Skin, Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. It follows her life as a traveling welder, from shipyards to tar sands, pulp mills to power stations across Canada and in the U.S. In March of 2024, she traveled to Waterloo, Ontario to accept a

literary prize for the book. Congratulations to Hilary Peach on being named the 2023 winner of the Edna Stabler Award for Creative Nonfiction. Wilfrid Laurier University President Deborah McClatchy. Her deep dive into the culture of boiler making through her lens as one of the only women in the trade brings a world most of us would otherwise never experience. She spent two decades as a traveling boiler maker, often the only woman on a job site. Through her wit and keen sense of observation, she tackles the tough and enduring topic of sexism in the trades, and brings us all along on the journey into the world of industrial construction. Hilary Peach took to the stage at Laurier University to give a public talk. She explores why the trades remain a work culture so identified with men,

closed off to women and other so-called outsiders. Except that outsiders like Hilary Peach do enter the trades, and some even persevere. Their presence opens the eyes of male colleagues and opens the door for others. The question is, how to keep them there? Her talk is interspersed with readings, stories from her memoir. But she begins with a vintage song lyric from the Rolling Stones. She was common, flirty She looked about 30 I would have run away

But I was on my own She told me later She's a machine operator She said she liked the way She told me later, she's a machine operator. She said she liked the way I held the microphone. The first time that I listened closely to that song was in 1988 when I was 20, working as a deckhand on a fishing boat off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. The boat was a 36-foot west coast combination,

and we were gillnetting salmon. When we fished at night after the net was set, there wasn't a whole lot to do during the wheel shift except keep an eye on it and listen to music to stay awake. There were two shoeboxes of cassette tapes in the galley, their cases missing, played so often the labels were worn off. I thought it was odd, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger writing about a 30-year-old female machine operator way back in 1965. I always wondered if it was a true story, and also what kind of machine it was. Some kind of a press? A machine in a factory? I imagined an excavator on a road building crew moving huge buckets of sand, and the image of that rinsed-out blonde at the controls stuck in my consciousness like a little kernel of possibility.

Eight years, an arts degree, and a number of different jobs. Later, I found myself looking for a career that would sustain me, something that would pay the bills. I enrolled in a trades discovery program, sampling a week of carpentry, another of electrical, some plumbing and sheet metal, and when it was over, I signed up for my first year of welding school. On day one, we gathered in the classroom off the side of the machine shop at the technical college. We were a cohort of 14, of whom I can remember the following. A nice guy called Richard, two Filipino guys, one guy who was a little older than the rest of us, one huge silent guy, one rambunctious mouthy guy, and the others who were just a blur of macho crowd noises about whom I remember nothing. I was the only woman, carefully dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, my hair in two neat braids.

At the end of the introductory class, the instructor called me over. He was a big man in his 60s, perched on a metal stool at a tall teaching desk. I had heard that he had been a professional wrestler. He had been teaching for a long time and was looking towards his retirement. You don't want to do this, he said. I don't? No, you don't. He adopted an appropriately serious expression so I would heed his message. Why not, I asked. Trust me, he said, you don't want to be a welder. He closed his plastic binder and stood up, the conversation over. I nodded my understanding. And how do you know what I want? He was pushing the binder into a kind of leather satchel and looked up, stern, like I was supposed to take it on his authority. Look, he said, it's a rough trade,

heavy work, long hours, you end up with bad knees, a bad back, breathing all that smoke, long hours. You end up with bad knees, a bad back, breathing all that smoke, traveling all the time, living in hotel rooms. It's not the kind of life for a... He paused. A what? I asked. He hung his dark blue lab coat up on a hook. It's not for you, he said, and headed for the door. I'll take that under advice, I started to answer, but he was already gone. That was the first of many times when someone that I have never met before has told me that I didn't want to be a welder. I was always amazed that a stranger would have such a clear grasp of what I wanted, but of course that's not what they meant. What they meant is that they didn't want me to be in the trade. And yet here I

am, I would respond. What a curious thing. This is an excerpt from the beginning of the book called The Shipyard. In the middle of the industrial hustle of the Esquimalt waterfront, two enormous blue gantry cranes tower into an even bluer sky. They travel slowly back and forth on railway tracks, picking up heavy objects and moving them from one place to another along the side of the dry dock. Everything is huge and the busy forklifts weaving in and out of the roadways seem tiny. Two workers standing under one of these cranes shouting into the industrial noise. To one side is a cluster of old single-story buildings that house various shop activities, the carpentry shop, the paint shop, the electrical shop, storage buildings, and sea cans full of tools. Next to the cranes is one of

the welding shops with large steel tables outside, their tops made of slats of flat bar set up for cutting steel with the oxyacetylene outfits. On the other side of the crane is the dry dock, then the walkway, a few more buildings, and some stacked up ATCO trailers, and beyond that is the ocean stretching to the horizon, dazzling in the afternoon sun. One of the cranes groans, kicks into gear, and begins traveling, a steel dinosaur with big blue legs. It is empty, its hooks pulled up to its belly on its way to pick up a shipping container. Running parallel to the crane tracks between the building and the sea is a rectangular excavation in the side of the bay, surrounded by a steel railing. It's a hole in the ground lined with concrete as long as two football fields and as deep as a three-story building.

They call it the ditch. The Esquimalt Graving Dock is the largest hard-bottomed dry dock on the west coast of the Americas. It is where the biggest ships, freighters, tankers, ferries, cruise ships, cable-laying ships, and barges are taken out of the water for refits and repairs. There is a giant movable wall at one end called the caisson. It opens to the ocean and when it is open, the dry dock floods and fills up to sea level. As long as the caisson is open, the water level goes up and down with the tides. Ships are floated in through this opening and positioned over dozens of large blocks that are under the water. Then the caisson is closed, the water is pumped out, and the ships are landed

on the blocks 15 meters below sea level. The caisson is as watertight as it can be and keeps the ditch from flooding while work is being done on the ships. The whole thing is built of concrete. Man lifts, welding machines, and other equipment are strapped, lifted, and flown into the bottom by cranes. Workers go down through hidden stairwells built into the walls. To get to the bottom, you descend through a concrete entryway on the sidewalk 66 steps down a secret passage where there is a door. It is an eerie feeling to step out onto that concrete expanse three stories below sea level with the ocean on the other side of the wall while people are busily racing around

in forklifts moving equipment. It is an even eerier feeling to put on a harness, clip into a man basket, and ascend beneath the hull of a 200,000-ton cruise ship where bright pink barnacles the size of dinner plates cling to the hull. For a few years in the early 2000s, I worked there, dispatched out of the Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, and Helpers Local 191 in Victoria. I'd moved to the island to take a welding job, working on an aluminum ferry project at a fabricating shop near the airport. It was a big project that lasted two years, and when it ended, I was in the union and put on the dispatch list for the shipyards. The work was mostly plate welding, running a wire feed machine. There were

not many women working in the yard. There was Judy, who was an excellent welder, but she was on the opposite shift, and there was Sue, one of the crane operators. Every day was a little bit terrifying, and I was inexperienced, which meant I was not always assigned the best jobs. But many of the jobs in the shipyard were lousy. It rains a lot in Esquimalt, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. We were issued the cheapest yellow rain gear, which tore easily, and I spent a lot of time standing or kneeling in several inches of water on the decks of rotting barges with 450 amps of electricity running through an electric air arc gouger. My workday often consisted of 10 hours of self-inflicted shock treatment. conflicted shock treatment. Eventually, I figured out that if I put plastic bags over my socks before they got wet, and surgical gloves under my leather work gloves, and stabbed the electrified carbon straight down through the water at the lowest point, I could make a drain hole. If it

was draining at the low point, and I started cutting out plate at the highest points, I wasn't actually standing in the water and I got shocked less often. I didn't know that the shipyard should be building me a hoarding so I wasn't welding in a downpour and that they should be providing rubber boots that weren't a size 12. The summers were all big blue skies and shining water. My partner and I would climb into the man basket and fly up the outside of the hull to weld on some lugs, and it was glorious. But the winters were rain and wind, then snow and ice. If you were excellent at your job, which I was not, or good friends with supervision, which I definitely was not, then you could score a job inside the ship in winter, warm and dry.

They occasionally did put me inside, balanced on a plank tacked to the side of a cargo hold or sliding along in the dark double bottom of an oil tanker. Usually that happened when the rain stopped, when the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun flashed off the water and the guys on deck wore dark glasses and worked with their sleeves rolled up. The caisson at the end of the dry dock was not completely watertight and there was always a big puddle called the moon pool at that end. One afternoon I arrived for night shift and

a crowd of guys were standing at the railing looking down into the enclosure. At the bottom was a young sea lion, a big male, roaming around the inside of the dry dock trying to find a way out. He had been caught inside swimming around when the caisson closed and when the water was pumped out, he was stuck there at the bottom. You could see a track circling the perimeter of the enclosure from his body dragging over the concrete. He had been there for hours, desperately trying to find a way back to the ocean.

The workers would have to cross the gangway to board the ship or work on shore. No one would be down in the bottom that night. When it was dark, I crossed the caisson to the far side and started down the stairs. I popped out at the bottom just as the sea lion was turning a corner, coming towards me. He stopped abruptly about 10 meters away, and we looked at each other. He was panting, and I was hypnotized by his huge brown eyes. Then I started talking to him. Hey, I said. I just came down to tell you what's going to happen, because I asked around, and I thought you might want to know. He moved a little ways away, then stopped facing me. I explained that

the next day they were going to drop a basket down into the bottom with a crane and people with long poles were going to herd him into it. He was not going to get hurt, just directed into a cage, then lifted out, sat down on the other side and released. I know it seems unbelievable, I said, and it's going to be scary, but that's what's going to happen. And you'll be fine. You won't get hurt. They can't do it at night because the animal people aren't here, so you have to wait until tomorrow. He bobbed his big head and moved a little closer. I stepped back towards the stairwell. So tonight, I told him, you just need to relax. Nothing's going to happen tonight.

It was a hot day and you've been doing laps for hours. You need to take it easy. The sea lion huffed. I told him to go to the moon pool and cool off, rest up. Everything was going to be okay. Then I retreated to the stairwell and climbed back up the 66 stairs to ground level. When I got back to my workstation, my foreman asked where I had been. I was talking to the sea lion, I said.

He looked around, then said, What are you doing here? Why don't you go home? Get married. Have some babies. This is no place for women. The sea lion finished his lap, then went to the moon pool and lay down in about two feet of water. I'm sure it had nothing to do with our talk, that he just went there because it was getting dark. When I left at dawn, he was almost invisible, lying in the moon pool in the shadow of the caisson.

The next day they moved him out. They used to say at the shipyard that you would never advance if you didn't have the ring, by which they meant the Masonic ring, the one my grandfather and uncles had, the one where there weren't any women in the cabal. I don't know if that was true, but I do know that you needed 30 days on the same job to get seniority and that I was consistently laid off on my 28th or 29th day. Like the sea lion, I was destined to go around and around, doing laps at the bottom, until someone flew me out in a basket. This little essay section that I'm calling The Fly. The song by the Rolling Stones called The Spider and the Fly was inspired by a poem of the same title written in 1829 by a woman, Mary Howitt. It's a fable about entrapment from the point of view of the wily spider. But from the fly's perspective, it's a cautionary tale about

getting into something that you might not be completely prepared for or able to easily get out of, such as making the decision to go into a trade, a career-long situation that's as sticky as rock and roll. Howitt wrote the fable at the height of the first industrial revolution, and I want to tell you about another fable that started around this time, a story I like to call the story of who gets to do what. More than 300 years ago, in 1712, the first steam engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine was invented. Simply put, it was a kind of water pump that

sucked water up into a series of cylindrical chambers. Water was heated, which would evaporate into steam, creating pressure, which transformed into energy. It was a big technological event and signified the beginning of a whole series of inventions, progressively more complex machines and devices, as factories, manufacturing plants, and industrial processes became automated. These included the cotton gin, the steam locomotive, the telephone, the light bulb, and the airplane in 1903. It was during this period of rapid industrial evolution that the energy trades, that is, mechanical, electrical, steam, and fuel-based technologies became fully described. Technologies

that came with whole new categories of work because people had to learn how to run the machines. This was the era that invented occupations like mechanic and machinist. Of course, there were trades that predated the steam engine. There were no electricians before there was electricity, but there were, for example, carpenters. And among workers at that time, it was already established that most of the trades belonged to men. Women stayed home and raised babies, cooked meals, preserved foods, did the laundry, all vital tasks, while the men went out into the world and worked not only as carpenters, but as stonemasons, blacksmiths, cobblers, coopers, wheelwrights, bladesmiths, and butchers. But later, after the steam engine, after the cotton gin and the light bulb and the telephone,

But later, after the steam engine, after the cotton gin and the light bulb and the telephone, there were suddenly all these new occupations, more and more of them as technology evolved. Enter the 20th century, and there were riveters, iron workers, pipe fitters, welders, boiler makers, electricians, and machine operators. Workers were needed in the steel foundries and the lumber mills, and the factories that built cars and trains and ships, and later tires and roads and weapons and buildings and bridges. Designers were also required, and engineers of all types, and chemists and metallurgists, who would do these jobs? In this fable, the story of who gets to do what, men will do these jobs, which makes me wonder how were hundreds of thousands of

working-class men originally convinced that it would be a great idea to go underground for 30 years to work in the coal mines or in the steel foundry making pig iron. But they were. Men have been told for a very long time that they are the ones who must maintain and operate the machines, design the buildings, engineer the bridges, build the roads, the ships and the houses, install the electrical infrastructure, invent the plumbing and hydronic heating systems, and keep track of all of it so that the world doesn't fall apart. And they were told that they are the only ones who can do these things, no one else. They are indispensable. And the men believe this story because who doesn't want to be indispensable? To feel needed and to be paid well.

Not as well as the factory owners or lawyers or bankers or politicians or other people in positions of power who made up the story and who were profiting handsomely, but compared to the assembly line workers, tradesmen have always been paid well. These were the good jobs, the honorable jobs. And as the Industrial Revolution raged on, enormous factories were built, and the factories required vast numbers of workers. All of the technological inventions that were making everything so efficient were going to require people to operate them. But there was a huge labor shortage. Where was industry going to find the thousands of people needed to do the difficult, dangerous, repetitive, and low-paying work of the factories. Where would these workers come from? And it was decided that because these jobs required less

skill than trades jobs, women could be employed doing line work or operating the looms and sewing machines. And because women's work was not valued, it would be acceptable to pay them almost nothing, which was still more than they were getting at home. Then industry leaders realized that there was another source of very inexpensive or even free labor, children. Employing orphaned children or children from families too poor to support them was an efficient way to acquire a labor force for a factory, and it is still happening in many places today. In fact, some of us are probably wearing clothing right now that was made by children. Women have known for a long time that this is not a great story for us. It limits our experience in strict and specific ways. From the beginning, when the roles were first assigned, there have been

women who did not accept the story and who have said, Why can't I be a carpenter? Why can't I be a doctor or an artist? Until the late 1700s, at the same time that the steam engine was being developed, women who questioned the status quo were still being prosecuted for witchcraft. This is a process that we know did not go well for them. You're listening to the first part of a public talk by Hilary Peach, the author of an award-winning memoir called Thick Skin, field notes from a sister in the brotherhood.

Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad.

My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. And being I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. It's March of 2024, and author Hilary Peach is on stage at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. We are pleased to honour Hilary Peach with the 2023 Edna Stabler Award for Creative Nonfiction for her book, Thick Skin, Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. The Associate Dean of Arts, Gavin Brockett, has presented her with a prize for her memoir, which is a writer's take on life in a highly specialized trade. Hillary takes the reader on a lively journey through her nearly 30 years as a boilermaker,

a lucrative but tough trade that saw her follow jobs across North America. With wit, humor, and pull-no-punches honesty, Hillary describes both the rigors and the extremes of a Boilermaker's work welding industrial metal structures. Frequently funny and often gritty, this memoir leaves the reader informed, entertained, and greatly admiring of those who undertake this unseen but invaluable work. This invaluable work is most often done by men. And in this second half of her talk, which also includes a reading from her memoir, Hilary Peach explores why exactly that is. Let's travel back to the present and imagine a modern construction site populated mostly by men in supervisory roles, in positions of power within the unions, and as regular workers who all believe this story, the story of who gets

to do what. Who do you think told them the story? If not in words, then with their actions. Their fathers, maybe. And who told their fathers? Maybe their fathers' fathers. It's an ancient story. It's inherited, and it goes deep. But now, we are at a time in our history when we are realizing that many of the stories that we've been telling ourselves for the past 300 years around gender, race, colonization, class, climate, wealth, industry, and resources, many of these stories are not accurate. And that's the problem with a story that says that only men can do all the things. It's a fable, which is a literary way of saying that it's a big fat lie. On the modern construction site, among all of these men, because it is still around 96% men in field construction,

imagine a shiny, brand new, freshly minted journeywoman. She has all her training, she has all her tickets, she is confident and qualified when she arrives on this new job site. She is enthusiastic and excited and she is full of optimism. She is going to work hard, prove herself, and be successful. So the jobs are being assigned, and the foreman introduces her to her new partner, who is a second-year apprentice with half her experience. And the apprentice looks at her, and then he says, What are you doing here?

what are you doing here? So this is one of the weirdest things that happens to women entering the trades. What are you doing here? You don't belong here. Why are you here? I used to get variations of that question all the time, and it's confusing because it's not the kind of thing a worker would normally say to another worker. If one dude told another dude he didn't belong on the worksite, it would make no sense. Because of his very dude-ness, he does belong, and he is considered indispensable. The newly minted journeywoman, however, has just spent at least four years training in every aspect of her trade, honing her skills, and her less experienced partner wants to know why she is there. The question is weird because it is not of our time. It comes out of a 300-year-old legend and no longer makes sense in the context of modern life.

It only makes sense to the apprentice because he has been taught that it has always been thus and thus it will always be. So when a woman pops up unexpectedly in the middle of his fairy tale, he really doesn't understand. But the tradeswoman has rejected the fairy tale a long time ago, perhaps generations ago. It is no mystery to her why she is there. She needs to pay the rent. She doesn't realize that just by showing up, she is walking into the ground floor of the patriarchy and destabilizing an entire hierarchy that is based on centuries of legend, practice, and personal belief. The majority of tradesmen are highly skilled, perfectly decent guys. The stereotype that we hear is that the trades

are rife with misogynists, and misogynists can be found in the trades. But they can also be found in other sectors, including politics, law enforcement, the military, entertainment industry, education, and medicine. When I sit down in a lunchroom on a construction site, I don't see a room full of misogynists. I see a bunch of regular guys, many of whom still labor under a belief system that is no longer practical or in sync with reality. On a job site where the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion have never been addressed, it's not uncommon for a tradeswoman to face systemic resistance from the entire crew. It is out of place, out of proportion, and without reason.

For her, every day feels like riding a bicycle into a headwind. And the tradeswoman does not understand what it is that she has done. To take systemic hostility personally is a natural response, but is also a mistake to spend time trying to figure out why she is receiving this treatment. She might be assigned the worst jobs or the worst partner, or be the first person laid off. She might be isolated or bullied or the subject of gossip or rumors or violence. And she has done absolutely nothing to deserve it except walk into a very, very old story, a story that has no part for her. You could say she is the right person in the right place at the wrong time.

With thick skin, field notes from a sister in the brotherhood, I wanted to write a book that was respectful toward women, but that was also respectful towards men. We seldom talk about the raw deal that the men in hyper male workplace environments are subjected to. The men, for the most part, are good guys. They are our allies, our mentors, our apprentices, our partners, and our brothers. Many working men carry a burden of responsibility that they've inherited and did not ask for and must exist within a very narrow definition of masculinity. The construction trades state that a man is composed of a certain collection of specific qualities, and if he strays outside of that definition, he may be at risk. So at least at work, working men

are expected to maintain these parameters, and their experiences are subsequently limited. It varies by trade and it varies by region, but in construction there are always things that men cannot do because certain activities are considered not masculine, such as crying, openly discussing troubling issues, managing anxiety, providing sympathy, or seeking help, all things which I have felt the need to do at different times during my career on the tools. Instead, men are encouraged to suck it up, quit whining, push through, and exhibit a stoicism that may be contributing to the current spikes in poor mental health, self-harm, and addiction in working men. We know that so-called toxic masculinity is terrible for women, but it's also terrible for men.

The second excerpt is a story, a true story, from the book, and it's called, I Wouldn't Take You With Me. I would never take a woman with me out on the high iron. Lawrence told me that at Harmack while we were partnered together on the blowdown tank. He was an iron worker who worked with us as a permit, then later joined as a member. He was an excellent welder and seldom spoke. He was slight and wiry and nimble as a cat. He always wore the heelless ironworker boots with his cuffs tucked and taped up and a black hoodie with the hood pulled well forward, shielding his face. His face, when you could see it, was always dirty like a child's. He just blurted it out. He finished burning a rod, lifted his welding helmet, and

delivered his line. I would never take a woman with me out on the high iron. It was the only time he'd ever spoken to me a statement of fact. He wanted me to know, I suppose, that that's where he drew the line. I knew what he meant. If you're an ironworker welding structural steel, walking the I-beams 20 or 30 or 40 stories up, you need to be able to trust your partner. You don't want to be out there with just anyone. You want to know that your partner is capable, doesn't need looking after, isn't going to walk out to the end of a beam and freeze. after isn't going to walk out to the end of a beam and freeze, and you want to know that person is capable of saving your life if necessary, because it might be. Lawrence had worked the high iron for years as a younger man before fall protection was mandatory. He didn't have to brag.

The fact that he was still alive said enough. We were not working on a 40-story building, walking out on a 9-inch I-beam. We were welding out the transition of the top of the new blowdown tank, which is only about 20 feet up, and we could get to the top by climbing a couple levels of scaffold. I was standing on the scaffold welding the transition, and Lawrence was crouched on top of the tank welding a seam. I could tell it wasn't personal. He just wanted me to know. welding the transition, and Lawrence was crouched on top of the tank, welding a seam. I could tell it wasn't personal. He just wanted me to know. He'd weld jet rod with me, but walking the high iron was out. That's okay, Lawrence, I said, because there's lots of places

I wouldn't take you either, so we're about even. We finished the shift in silence. The next day, the sky was clear and blue when we climbed up on the tank and started welding. Jet rod is a fast-moving fill rod with a heavy flux and a high deposition rate. I hadn't used it before. The rods were long and awkward, and you had to move quickly. Lawrence had welded miles of it, and when I asked, he gave me a quick lesson. It changed the way I was handling it, and my I asked, he gave me a quick lesson. It changed the way I was handling it, and my welding was suddenly much better than the day before. Then out of nowhere, he spoke. Where? Where what? Where wouldn't you take me? You said yesterday there were places.

Oh, I said, well, I wouldn't take you to the opera. I wouldn't go to the opera, he said. That's why I wouldn't take you. I don't think you'd like it. After first coffee, we climbed back up on the tank. Where else, Lawrence asked. Where else what? Where else wouldn't you take me? He seemed

genuinely interested. He knew he wouldn't want to be with me 20 stories in the air, but he hadn't considered that I might also have no-go zones for him. I wouldn't take you to the ballet, I said. Lawrence scowled. I wouldn't go to the ballet. I said. Lawrence scowled. I wouldn't go to the ballet. I know. We welded for a while longer. Where else? I took off my helmet, unsnapped my respirator, and started cleaning it with some alcohol wipes. I wouldn't take you to a library because you'd be bored. I wouldn't take you to a night school cooking class or to yoga because you're shy. Do you go to those things, he asked. Yes, we welded. I would not take you to an art gallery, I volunteered, where there was, say, a retrospective of French Impressionist paintings, but I would take you to a sculpture garden.

What's a sculpture garden, he asked. It's a park or a public garden, and there are giant sculptures displayed, sometimes by one artist and sometimes different ones. They can be bronze or steel or stone, whatever. You just walk around the park and look at sculptures. Lawrence studied me for a few seconds. I'd go to that, he said. I nodded.

That's how the rest of the week played out. We would weld, then discuss the places where I would or would not take him, and he would tell me whether or not he'd go. Usually I had it right. I would take you to a dog show. I'd go to a dog show. I'd take you on a bird count, or you spend the day looking for birds and recording what you saw. I'd do that. I wouldn't take you ice skating. I wouldn't take you with me to try on shoes. I would take you to ride a miniature train. I would not take you on a ferris wheel. While we were at work, the world became neatly divided into places where Lawrence would go with me and places where he would not. I would take you to a punk rock show, I said on our third day on the tank, but only one

of the old style ones in an abandoned warehouse or somewhere, not a nightclub. I'd go to that. I wouldn't take you to a jazz improv show or a new music concert. I don't think I'd like that. I'd take you to a poetry reading, I said, but only if it was in a bar, not a cafe. Lawrence looked doubtful. In a really crummy part of town, I added, and I wouldn't make you stay for the whole thing. A bar, he asked. 20 minutes tops, then you're free to go. I'd go to that, he said decisively, if it was in a bar. I wouldn't take you to a fancy dinner party where your place setting had more than two forks, but I would take you to a Moroccan restaurant. Lawrence paused, frowned. I don't know about that,

he said. Seriously, I asked. This is the deal breaker? I thought for sure it would have been the poetry reading. That's Africa, right? He asked. I thought for sure it would have been the poetry reading. That's Africa, right? He asked. I nodded. North Africa, on the Mediterranean. What's the food like? He asked. It was great. I said, there's lamb, or you can order a big delicious stew with whole pieces of chicken in it, and vegetables with spices, and preserved lemons, and olives. After a long moment, Lawrence nodded. I would try that, he said. On the fourth day, we finished the tank and our seam was going to be x-rayed overnight. Lawrence, who never spoke to anyone, was waiting for me at the end of the shift outside the trailer. We had started walking out of the mill to the gate together. A couple of guys

were watching from the smoking area. Where are you two lovebirds headed off to? One of them called out. Before I could answer, Lawrence turned around and called back. We're going to a dog show in a sculpture garden, dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, and maybe a poetry reading after in a punk rock bar. He kept walking, smiling a little. I shrugged. I just let him decide, I said. It's easier that way. Obviously, Lawrence and I were never an item, but we did become allies. Most people know what a carpenter is, or what a plumber or an electrician does, because we have had these people in our homes fixing things.

We have seen them at work, and we have a direct connection to their labor, but ask what a boilermaker does, or anworker or a pipefitter or a millwright, and far fewer people know what these are because there's no retail side to these occupations. They exist in the back room of the world we know, in the basement mechanical room that only the maintenance people go to. We go to our jobs, into restaurants, and buy groceries, but relatively few of us know how this world we interact with actually works, how the office building we work on is erected, or how the bridge we commute over is built, or how the steam piping, gas lines, and electrical conduit underneath the city bring energy into the buildings. Most of us don't even think about it. It's like a different country,

a place that we've heard about but have never actually been to. In the Western world, industrial and infrastructure trades work in the shadows, keeping everything going so that privileged people can benefit from the conveniences of modern life. Because of the separation between industrial trades and our daily lives, the conventions that govern behavior on work sites are different than the rules for behavior at home. On my first job at a pulp mill, which happens to be the pulp mill where I met Lawrence, at the end of our coffee break, the superintendent banged his hard hat on the door of the trailer and shouted, Get back to work, you bunch of bedwetting homos. This was considered acceptable behavior by a person in a position of leadership, not something that you would expect to encounter if you work in, say, a bank. But the hyper-masculine culture of construction trades didn't just magically

become toxic. It's the result of a long-standing, monogendered society. This is what happens when you exclude diversity from a workforce. It creates this place, and it's a place that is out of balance. I'm often asked how we can increase the number of women in trades because it's been holding at four percent more or less for 50 years and I've learned to clarify what exactly is being asked because there are at least two questions inside that one question and they like to wear the same dress. The first is the recruitment question. How do we get more women to go into the trades? In the 1990s, there were a lot of social programs attempting to tell underemployed women what to do, but the prescriptive approach doesn't really work.

What seems to work is what we're doing now, and that is when we present the trades as a viable option early and often for girls, women, trans and non-binary individuals in a way that is accessible and allows people to make informed decisions. In my region, there are trades camps for 9 to 13 year old girls, two weeks of day camp where they can try out carpentry, electrical, they do a plumbing project, some metalwork, and I'll tell you once a 10 year old has used a jigsaw to cut out a birdhouse nobody will be taking that tool out of her hands after she's an adult. The other question that lives inside the how do we increase the numbers question is about retention, because the attrition rate of women in the trades is extremely high. It's not because women can't do the work or aren't suited for it. Women quit after investing years in apprenticeship programs because of the inequity

and hostility that they encounter on the job. Yet the onus for change remains on the women. Yet the onus for change remains on the women. What can women do to increase the numbers? Actually, the companies need to change workplace culture, starting with leadership. Everybody wants a good job. The numbers of women and non-binary trades workers will increase when they know they are going to an equitable and respectful workplace. That's the bottom line. That's what the question should be.

Whether we are talking about construction in the trades, or sports, or politics, or entertainment, or medicine, or education, what can organizations do to create a more inclusive workplace. She was common, shifty. She looked about 50. The Rolling Stones changed the words to that song in 1995. They changed the story and made that machine operator 20 years older, and they left her in the trade the whole time. Do you know what the hourly rate is for a machine operator with 20 years experience?

Her pension is going to be off the scale. It is very difficult to change a story, to rewrite a fable, But you can start to mess around with the existing storyline. You can get under its skin and start to poke into some of the softer places. So I'm about 50 now, and I now am sometimes asked for my best advice to new tradeswomen, which is actually kind of funny because I'm not known for my ability to get along in a group. So take it or leave it. So I say what I hope will be helpful, and it's the same advice that I tell myself. Be stubborn and patient and organized. Don't take things personally. Recognize your allies. Be a good mentor to your apprentice, and if you can,

find a way to get inside the story, make a space for yourself, show up every day, go to work, and write your own ending. Thank you. That's Hilary Peach at Laurier University in March 2024. She's the author of an award-winning memoir, Thick Skin, Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. Hilary took a few questions from the audience. Before the book, did you tell people that you were a poet, like Lawrence or the other people you worked with?

That was funny because for a long time I didn't tell anybody anything about my personal life at all because I'm kind of afraid. I was sort of afraid of them. And then I kind of, I went through this whole coming out process that I was very nervous about. And then I finally sort of admitted like, I write poetry. And they're like, huh, cool. I build steam engines. Like, you know, I fix old locomotives. So it was nothing. Yeah, yeah, I did. I did. And it turns out there's quite a few people in trades who write things. You know, you see commercials on the television that they're trying to get women into the trades and bring them in. And I know other guys in the trades, electricians and so on and so forth. And it just doesn't really seem to

be taking any effect at all because it's a really tough thing for a woman to go into that world i don't care whether you're an electrician a carpenter a welder my daughter's in the trades and she says that that's a problem for her like she's on a crew in ukraine at some point and she's like one of 15 people the rest are all guys yeah and she's got to live with that. And she says, basically, she just removes herself at the end of the day, like just guys being guys drinking beer. And yeah, it's just not an easy go. No, it's not. What I've seen, I started in 1995. I've sort of seen it go up and down. It depends on the political climate and it depends a great

deal on whether or not there's a labor shortage, because when there's a labor shortage, suddenly there's a huge push to get women to go into the trades. The thing that I'm sort of coming around to thinking is that the onus has been on the women, is always on the women, like, well, what can women do? How can women get into the trades? How can women behave so that they are okay in this culture? And so for years, I was like, huh, yeah, that's a really hard question. I don't know. But now I'm kind of going, actually, it's not up to her. It's up to the company owner to create a safe and respectful workplace. Because if she knows that she can go to work and not be assaulted, then she's much more

likely to go to work. So I think that's the shift that has to happen. And I think that shift happens by people telling these stories more and more and kind of saying, actually, it's not acceptable. This is not acceptable. Right. And that's what this was about, is that this is a carryover from a previous time. But you're right, it's a struggle. So I teach in women and gender studies here at the university. Part of my research is about hanging out in manufacturing plants on the floor. So I spend extensive amounts of time talking with welders. But I heard you interviewed, and when I heard you speak, it made sense why, in response to the person who just spoke, why your book is mandatory reading for the course that I'm currently teaching. But your book is filling in a gap

that has so been missing in terms of the work that we're all doing. So thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much. One of the things that's really, okay, so there's a couple of things I'm seeing happening in BC that work are really, really work, have like a direct plug in terms of changing the historical mindset around gender in skilled trades. One is the kids camps, literally nine and 12, nine to 12 year olds. They make an extension cord. They build a sprinkler. They're getting in there before the girls have been told they can't use power tools. And once you've used all the power tools, someone comes around when you're 16 and says, you can't use power tools. You can say, well, I can't, you know, so that's really interesting to me. And the other thing is that women in positions

of leadership in foreman and superintendent positions, I'm starting to see that a little bit, but also in the colleges. So my friend Andrea Dirtle, we were just in Seattle, she's a gas fitter and a licensed plumber, and she teaches gas fitting and plumbing at Camosun College in Victoria. And she told a story at the conference there about going to do a plumbing job, a residential plumbing job, and there was a little girl, a nine-year-old girl, watching her the whole time. And so Andrea was telling her, oh, what are you doing now? What are you doing? And Andrea was explaining the whole thing to her and, hey, can you pass me that? Yeah, that's called an open-ended wrench or whatever.

the whole thing to her and, hey, can you pass me that? Yeah, that's called an open-ended wrench or whatever. Passing her tools and she had this interaction with this little girl and that was about 12 years ago and she said, just a few weeks ago, that little girl graduated from her program as a licensed plumber, but also she's now teaching at the college level, so she's teaching guys. So if you've gone through your schooling and you've been taught all your skills by someone who looks like me or who looks like Christine, then you have a different way of thinking when you go out into the field, right? You don't go into the field with a preset. Your preset mind doesn't say women can't do these things because you've learned all the

things you know from women. Hilary Peach is the author of Thick Skin, Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood. The book won the 2023 Edna Stabler Award for Creative Nonfiction. Thank you to Bruce Gillespie and Carolyn Morrison of Wilfrid Laurier University. This episode was produced by Lisa Godfrey. Web producer for Ideas is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Will Yar and Danielle Duval. Acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly.

And I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.