Vennessa Rose doesn’t mind the glances she gets when she’s wearing her hard hat and construction gear.
“I think it’s awesome to say I’m a plumber, especially as a woman. It’s like a secret superpower,” says the 21-year-old Toronto woman.
Rose has found a satisfying career in the construction industry, though her gender is still vastly under-represented in Ontario. Women account for just 12 per cent of the industry workforce, including off-site work, and females comprise a mere three per cent of on-site and skilled trades jobs, according to a 2019 Prism Economics and Analysis study. There will be a shortage of 350,000 people required for skilled trades by 2025, according to the Ontario government.
Rose discovered a career option she didn’t realize existed until she saw a video about women in the trades. After immigrating to Canada from Jamaica with her parents, Rose lived in the foster system from age 10. She earned top grades and graduated from high school on the honour roll, then studied marketing in college but didn’t enjoy it. She got her sign language certificate, then tried child and youth worker studies, but none were the right fit.
She was working in a bookstore when she visited a resource centre and watched the video that inspired her to attend the BOLT Day of Discovery, hosted co-hosted by George Brown College and Tridel, where she toured the college and a construction site. Tridel established BOLT — Building Opportunities for Life Today — in 2009 to connect young people who want to pursue training or post-secondary education in construction with the industry.
“While I was on the tour of the construction site, I was smiling ear-to-ear under my mask, thinking this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Rose recalls. She was accepted into the Hammer Heads program that provides under-resourced and Aboriginal youth with registered apprenticeship opportunities in the skilled trades and attended a two-month boot camp.
“You learn how to use a tape measure, how to carry yourself in a certain way, how to be a good worker.” Rose spent time with different trades unions, and plumbing was where she excelled.
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“You can like a trade, but if the union doesn’t think you are a fit, they don’t have to accept you,” she says. “I was completely open. I was excited because I wanted plumbing.” Rose graduated from Hammer Heads in December, 2021, and is working for Stellar Mechanical Inc. as a first-year plumbing apprentice at the Plaza Midtown condo site. Not only does it “feed her soul,” she earns as she learns, and has been able to pay off her student loan.
“It’s been a great introduction to the trades working with this company. Everyone wants you to learn,” she says. Once she completes her five-year apprenticeship, Rose says she can do side jobs and her goal is to work on her own house in the future.
While she is a relative newcomer to the industry, here are three other examples of women who have forged successful careers in the home building and construction world.
Jane Almey, partner/owner, Bluescape Construction Management
Almey never imagined she’d spend her days on highrise building sites as a construction manager. She excelled in math and sciences in high school and with no specific plan, decided to study civil engineering at the University of Waterloo.
“I didn’t realize what I wanted to do until I was halfway through university,” she admits. “Sitting in an office all day wasn’t going to be for me. Construction was appealing. You see something different every day. It’s fascinating, interesting and dynamic.”
Her five-year co-op program had far more men than women. Ten to 15 years ago, she was often the only woman on job sites. “Thankfully that has changed and we are starting to see more women in the trades, such as drywall, taping, painting and landscaping.”
She joined Bluescape in 2008 when it was a small firm and grew with the company as Toronto’s condo market took off. In 2017, she and four others became partners and business has flourished. She was construction manager for Reina, an Etobicoke condo by Spotlight Developments and Urban Capital, that had the first all-female development team in Canada.
Almey heads to job sites in the morning to touch base with the site superintendents and do a walkaround. She’ll look at the schedule to see if work is falling behind and see if there are any problems management should know about. The other half of her day is spent in the office, looking at tenders, preparing contract documents and reviewing shop drawings.
Women don’t necessarily have to have a knack for the trades to work in the industry, she says. “I’m far from a handyperson. No one would ask me to pick up a tool. Mine is a fascinating job with so many iterations and it changes day to day. I hope people realize that construction is more than being on tools. There are so many other skills and aspects you can tap into.”
Kim Valliere, vice-president of development construction, RioCan
Valliere studied architecture at Toronto Metropolitan University, and found her true passion in the project management stream. After starting with a small consulting firm, she was hired by RioCan 20 years ago. In addition to scheduling and budgeting, she’s involved in the entire process, from assembling the team to pulling together all aspects required to create a development. Her team oversees $400- to $500-million in commercial, residential and mixed-used developments a year.
“It’s gone from me being the only woman in the room or construction trailer to being one of many,” she says. “I’m seeing more women coming up in real estate and construction. One of my focuses at RioCan is building that representation. I am a founding member and co-chair of RioCan Women’s Initiative Network that supports mentoring and supporting women in the industry. This work is paying dividends. My team has 16 people and more than 50 per cent of them are women.”
Her team’s current focus is The Well, RioCan’s most ambitious development across Canada, that will include office space, retail and food services and 1,700 residential units in six buildings bordering Front, Spadina and Wellington Sts.
“The most exciting piece is the complexity of co-ordination of that kind of project and bringing together internal and external team members and building a community,” she says.
Jenn Blue, senior project manager, Minto Communities GTA
Blue thought about becoming an architect while growing up in Oshawa. Her father brought home a drafting table, but she never used it and studied English and political science at the University of Guelph.
“My plan was to be a technical writer, but I was hired by a small developer as a project co-ordinator,” she says. “He taught me everything — how to interpret drawings, how to look at buildings and deal with the Tarion warranty program. He hired a general contractor and I was the main point person with him for three years.
“I kind of fell into the role but absolutely loved it,” she says. “I loved working with different people, including the trades and building owners. It was interesting, challenging and kept me motivated.”
Sixteen years ago she was hired by Minto as a project co-ordinator and is now a senior project manager. She works with all departments including land, product development, estimating, sales and marketing, coming in during the design and development phase, seeing projects through working drawings and renderings, to ground-breaking.
“Women are always welcome here at Minto and there is never any question that women are any less deserving. I’ve never felt like a woman in a man’s world. You realize you’ve earned your spot.”
“The life cycle of some these projects can be six to eight years and I love seeing something start to finish,” Blue says. “I love getting involved early from, ‘We’ve got land, what can we do with it,’ all the way through the excitement of selling units.”
“I’ve always stayed true to who I am and I’m not afraid to speak up. If I have any advice, it’s put your hand up, find the good people who are going to support you and take you to meetings you aren’t supposed to be at. I was invited to things, brought into things early and got to see how others do their job. It’s a great industry for women to get involved in.”
Tracy Hanes is a GTA-based writer and a freelance contributor for the Star. Reach her via email: tracyhanes@yahoo.ca
RESOURCES
Build a Dream: A national, non-profit organization dedicated to advancing diversity and inclusion initiatives. Since its inception in 2014 in Windsor, it has delivered programs to inspire young women; providing confidence, filling workforce skill gaps, and offering a new perspective for workforce problem-solving. Visit webuildadream.com/events/ for upcoming Career Discovery Expos.
BOLT: Provides access to education, training, and employment in construction to inspire new generation of professionals through talks, job shadowing, Discovery Days, scholarships and training. boltonline.org/
Hammer Heads: Skill and employment-based training program created by the Central Ontario Building Trades (COBT) in 2009. Offers apprenticeship career opportunities to the youth of under-resourced neighbourhoods in our communities. hammerheadsprogram.com
Women in Skilled Trades (WIST): In partnership with the Government of Ontario, Canadian Women’s Foundation and RESCON (Residential Construction Council of Ontario), the Centre for Skills Development offers the Enhanced General Carpentry for Women program that provides tools and training for eligible women to launch careers in the construction industry. centreforskills.ca/Skilled-Trades/Women-in-Skilled-Trades-Enhanced-General-Carpentr. And also ontariocolleges.ca/en/apply/skilled-trades/women
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