Monday, October 23, 2023

Lighting a Spark

A CLAC Bootcamp graduate is now a first-year electrician apprentice who is learning his trade with Twiss Electric Ltd.

Twenty-year-old Lucas Cipolla had no doubt he was destined for a future in the trades. As a high school student, he was inclined to abandon the books in favour of sports or technical assignments where he could build something.

“I always liked using my hands,” says Lucas, who grew up in Hamilton and Oakville and now lives in Ancaster, Ontario. “I know how to use them to my max potential, and I’ve always liked the finished product. It just felt natural to me.”

After high school, he took a six-month preapprenticeship course at a community college. While he was confident about the direction of his career, he was still searching for the right path to reach his goal.

That’s when an old family friend reached out. Randy Parris, a CLAC representative in Mississauga, had known Lucas since he was a kid.

“We hadn’t talked in years, but he hit me up on Instagram and said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re interested

in becoming an electrician,’” recalls Lucas.

He had initially considered both plumbing and HVAC as possible job avenues but chose electrical because of his natural aptitude at math and because he likes the problem-solving nature of the work.

“You really have to think and plan before you start to do anything,” he says.

Randy suggested Lucas check out CLAC’s Bootcamp program, which offers a general introduction to the trades as well as an eight-week job placement. Lucas was accepted into the program and started in September 2022.

Bootcamp begins online, with a week of basic health and safety training. That’s followed by two weeks of in-class, hands-on training, which Lucas took at CLAC’s Cambridge Member Centre. Students are introduced to construction health and safety, how to safely use tools, construction-oriented math, and more. They also earn mandatory safety certificates.

Lucas says he felt at home during the training because of the skills he had learned at college. Were Bootcamp to expand, he suggests the program could offer trade-specific training for people who already know which field they want to enter.

“They were teaching a lot of stuff I already knew, but it was okay—I looked at it as sort of a refresher,” he says.

The bigger learning curve came with his work placement with ZSD Electric Inc. in Mississauga.

“They hired me on the spot—not just as a placement—and took me on as a first-year apprentice,” says Lucas.

He stayed with the company and learned all he could for six months but was then laid off due to lack of work.

“I know they wanted to put me on jobs where I could learn how to do things properly, but they just didn’t have anything happening at the time.”

Fortunately, Lucas got a lead on work at Twiss Electric Ltd., a CLAC-signatory company in Burlington, and was hired in early April. He has been busy ever since, learning his trade at a huge residential construction project in Oakville, just west of Toronto.

He says the Twiss team has a good vibe and he’s been learning a lot.

“It’s really easy to talk to them about anything,” he says. “Right now, I’m learning about fire alarms.”

He appreciates the feedback he gets on the job and isn’t afraid of criticism from the more experienced electricians.

“One of the apprentices that I’m working with, he’s a fifth year,” says Lucas. “He’s pretty hard on me, but he’s not mean or anything. He’s trying to discipline me and show me the best way to do a job. And everything he says, he’s right.”

It will take another four or five years for Lucas to become a journeyman electrician, but he feels he has the training, skills, and commitment to reach that goal.

“If you practice at something, you’re going to get better every day,” he says. “It’s going to be a big learning curve for a while, but if I keep doing what I’m doing, I can go anywhere.”

For more information on CLAC Bootcamp, visit yourtraining.ca/bootcamp.

Lighting a Spark

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