In the welding room at Coast Mountain College, sparks are flying around Shaina Robinson.
The 33-year-old mother of two is giving a demonstration of her trade by cutting patterned holes in a few pieces of sheet metal.
“You have to be careful when you’re in here,” she said to the bystander observing. “Make sure you have you have your mask and protection on.”
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With a steady hand, she carves out a circle from the metal and lets it fall to the ground. The shape may be simple, but the increasing skill with which she can make it shows how much progress she has made on her journey to becoming a professional tradeswoman.
“I like making things and being able to put them together,” Robinson said.
Robinson was born and raised in Prince Rupert. Born into a Nisga’a family with roots in Gingolx. She was one of nine children whose lives revolved around the coast.
Robinson’s father, Frank Robinson, was a gill netter who would take his daughter out on fishing trips up and down the coast to Bella Bella, Port Simpson and Hartley Bay in Superstar, the family boat.
“I was probably a baby when I went on a boat for the first time,” said Robinson. “I pretty much grew up on a boat. We would catch dog salmon (chum) during the fall and other types during other seasons.”
Robinson said her early years on the boat were fun, if not adventurous. Trips consisted mainly of helping to set up the nets for fishing. They would also use the fishing trips as opportunities to visit her older siblings who lived in the Lower Mainland.
Sometimes the fishing trips carried some danger. Once while out fishing near Bella Bella, Robinson and her father got caught in a storm so bad, they had to drop anchor and wait for it to pass.
“We were out with another boat and we had to take turns keeping watch to make sure the boat’s anchors didn’t drag,” Robinson said. “It was pretty windy, pretty rough.”
Another time on their way back to Prince Rupert from Bella Bella, Robinson and her father were caught in fog so thick they had to follow another boat with radar.
“I asked my dad how he knew if the boat knew where it was going,” she said with a laugh. “He said, ‘we’ll have to wait and see’.”
Eventually, life kept Robinson from going out on the boats. After giving birth to her first daughter, she stopped fishing and began to do other work in Prince Rupert. Eventually, as the fishing industry slowed, her father sold his boats and got out of the business all together.
Robinson said after a few years of working various jobs, she went to Hecate Strait Employment Development Society where she was introduced to carpentry, welding and pipe-fitting through a course. Robinson did some cutting and one of her first projects was cutting her initials in the metal.
“It was pretty cool,” she said. “I’d never worked with those types of things before so it was good to get an introduction.”
Robinson discovered she had a knack and passion for the profession. She enjoyed knowing that her skills helped to build something real that could be useful. For one of her projects, she built a band saw base for a technical school in Terrace. Starting from scratch she made the necessary measurements, cut the materials, welded them together and sent it to the school.
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“It worked perfectly for them,” she said. “I never thought I could do stuff like that.”
Robinson is nearing the end of her welding foundations course and is hoping that it will open up opportunities for her to build her career in the future.
In addition to a stable job, she said it feels good to be able to set example for her daughter — who is now 15 years old — and her 5-year-old son.
“She thinks it’s pretty cool,” Robinson said. “She says ‘wow that’s pretty cool mom’. She can’t believe that I did that.”
Showing them what she can do helps them to see what they can do.
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