Monday, December 2, 2019

Teach a Man to Fish

By Michael Schroeder Hubert, Training Program Manager

In Gods River in northern Manitoba, you don’t have to teach anyone how to fish. It is an integral part of life in this fisherman’s paradise. Trophy-sized lake trout, pickerel, brown trout, and northern pike can all be caught off the shore where the river drains out of Gods Lake to flow into Hudson’s Bay. By the end of November, the ice is thick enough that people there are starting their ice-fishing season.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime is as apt a proverb in Gods River as it is anywhere else in the world.

I work as a trainer in Manto Sipi First Nation and three other fly-in communities in northern Manitoba. There are new schools being built in these communities, and I’ve been given the opportunity to train local guys how to use the “fishing rods” of construction tools and skills. The goal is to equip them to participate more fully in the construction of these schools, but also to provide them with knowledge and skills that will make their employment opportunities better long after the school construction is complete.

The first module that I teach includes some basic training in how to use tools safely and how to measure and mark accurately and precisely. There is a wide range of skills that each person comes with, but it is good to start with the basics and figure out where everyone is at from there.

In one community, while we were doing some hands-on work with the tools, I quickly saw that one of the students was unsure how to use the power tools. I asked him about his experience and learned that he had never used any of the power tools that I was demonstrating. I had put a “fishing rod” into his hands for the first time. I spent more time with him than some of the other guys over the next few hours to make sure that he was getting the hang of using the tools in a safe but efficient manner.

The next time that I was back in that community, the training again involved hands-on work, this time building some form work. And there was my student who had no experience from the time before, right in there, using the tools confidently, and checking to see that the quality of workmanship of the group was up to standard. Confident, proud of his work, and eager to do more.

Employment opportunities in these communities aren’t as plentiful as the fish in Gods River, but I trust that the opportunity that I’ve been able to give these guys to add to their skills will help them provide for themselves and their loved ones for years to come.

Teach a Man to Fish

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