Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The Road to Representative

Years in trucking, highway maintenance, equipment operation, and union stewardship prepared Tenille Kowalchuk to advocate for CLAC members across southern Alberta

Guide Magazine

By Cathy Miehm

TENILLE KOWALCHUK DOES NOT HAVE to imagine what a long shift feels like, what it takes to earn respect on a tough job site, or how quickly work can disappear when a project wraps up. She has lived it.

Before joining CLAC as a representative in Calgary in early 2024, Tenille spent nearly two decades building a working life that took her from long-haul trucking to line painting, highway maintenance, snowplowing, and heavy equipment operation. These were jobs that started before sunrise, stretched through weekends and holidays, and demanded equal measures of stamina, judgment, and grit. Today, when she steps onto a construction site or into a job trailer to talk with members, she brings more than a title. She brings lived experience, hard-won credibility, and a deep understanding of the workers she represents.

Her perspective on work was shaped long before she even entered the workforce. Born and raised in Edmonton, Tenille comes from a blue-collar family with roots in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. Her father was a carpenter. Her mother worked in apprenticeship services for the provincial government, helping support the systems that trained skilled workers across Alberta. Her extended family was equally grounded in practical work: one grandfather was an airplane mechanic, another was a mechanic and truck driver who hauled grain and livestock. One grandmother cooked in hospitals and another worked as a nurse. Her two brothers also followed trade-oriented paths.

“We’re a very blue-collar family through and through,” says Tenille. In that world, work ethic was not an abstract value; it was a daily expectation. “Nothing was given to you. You had to earn it.”

Her road into trucking and heavy equipment operation was not perfectly straight. After high school, Tenille first tried hairdressing, a path far removed from her ultimate career journey. She loved parts of the work, but the experience ended badly. She later discovered she had not been properly entered on payroll and could not claim the apprenticeship hours she had spent nearly two years working toward. The result was devastating—lost time, lost money, and back taxes on earnings that had not been properly handled.

“I basically lost two years’ worth of my time and money,” she says. “It was a nightmare.”

IT WAS AN EARLY LESSON in how vulnerable workers can be when systems fail them or employers do not do what they should. Today, that experience makes her more determined to ask careful questions, verify details, and help members understand their rights.

After that setback, Tenille found her way into trucking on the recommendation of a friend. She earned her Class 1 license despite having no previous familiarity with big machinery. As she puts it, she went from “nothing to an 18-speed,” a leap that would have intimidated most people. She was the only woman in her training class, and soon after she became the first woman hired by one of the trucking companies she joined.

For two years, she hauled oilfield equipment from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, to Houston, Texas, making punishing back-and-forth runs that exposed her to every kind of weather, road, and risk. She loved the travel, the scenery, and the freedom of the job, but she also learned quickly that transport demands total attention.

“When your office is the highway for 13 hours a day, you cannot be complacent,” she says. “Safety is nonnegotiable. You have to be responsible for yours and everyone else’s safety.”

That safety-first mindset only deepened when she moved into line painting and highway maintenance. What first appealed to her was the possibility of seasonal work and winters off. What kept her there was the challenge, the teamwork, and the satisfaction of doing visible, useful work.

“I saw western Canada at 20 kilometres an hour,” says Tenille.

In doing so, she came to appreciate just how much hidden coordination goes into roadwork. Lines, shoulders, signage, snow removal, timing between crews, equipment and inspections—none of it happens by accident. Public complaints about road construction, she believes, often miss the complexity of what they are seeing. For Tenille, those years deepened her respect for logistics, for the skills required on site, and for the workers whose labour is so often judged without being fully understood.

HER CAREER BROADENED FURTHER WHEN she joined Ledcor Highways Ltd. and CLAC Local 63 as a line painting lead hand/acting foreperson, which opened the door to even more responsibilities. After relocating to Red Deer, Alberta, she spent the next nine and a half years adding snowplowing and other equipment work to her already wide-ranging resume. If there was machinery to learn, she learned it. If there was a job to be done, she figured it out.

She came to value the confidence that can grow through on-the-job training and from coworkers willing to hand over the controls and say, “Here, try it.”

Cross-training became a defining principle. “Being able to do everyone’s job so you can swap out, or if someone’s sick or they’re tired, just to keep the work going, you had to be able to cross-train,” says Tenille. It’s a lesson she still passes on to members: versatility keeps work moving and creates opportunities.

It was during her years with Ledcor that the path to becoming a representative began to take shape. Coworkers encouraged her to become a steward, and she spent nearly nine years learning CLAC from the member side while building trust with the crews around her. Along the way, she discovered a gift for organization, communication, and helping people work through problems without losing sight of the bigger picture.

Her leadership and organizational skills were recognized by Ledcor and she was tasked with helping to set up and support multiple highway maintenance shops in the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, region for one year. Working with mechanics and operators from Alberta, she helped train staff and establish operations in a very different environment. The assignment broadened her perspective yet again. It showed her how quickly strong systems and practical knowledge can make a difference, and it reinforced her gift for helping people build confidence, solve problems, and find their footing in unfamiliar situations.

WHEN THE OPPORTUNITY CAME TO join CLAC in Calgary in early 2024, both Tenille and the union believed she had the skills, experience, and compassion to be an effective representative. She was ready for a change and a fresh challenge, even if the transition required a different kind of discipline.

After years of physically demanding work, she had to adjust to a role that is more mental than muscular. The hardest part was slowing down and learning how to enjoy weekends, holidays, and the steadiness of salaried work after a career of callouts, weather-dependent pay, and jobs that rarely respected the calendar. At the same time, she recognized the opportunity to put all those years of experience to work in a new way. Today, representing construction members across southern Alberta along with some industrial units, she has found what she calls “my wheelhouse.”

Her background makes her particularly effective in the field. Members listen because they can tell she understands.

“When I’m meeting new members and I do my little spiel about what my background is, then I get the instant respect and the nods,” she says.

She knows what it means to work outdoors, to rotate between tasks, to rely on cross-training, to chase certifications, and to look ahead to the slow season before it arrives. She regularly encourages members to use CLAC Training opportunities to strengthen their resumes and open doors beyond a single project. “Beef up your resume before winter,” she tells them. “Go get your certifications for air brakes, skid-steer, or get your Class 3. There’s just so much work out there.”

Tenille knows from personal experience that employability often comes down to versatility. Her message is practical, not theoretical: build your skills, protect your options, and do not let pride, or fear, stop you from learning something new.

She’s also experienced the kind of instability that can force people to patch together a living any way they can. After one life transition, she spent years working three jobs just to piece together a full week. It was exhausting and unsustainable, but it taught her something about persistence, pride, and survival. She understands why workers stay where there is steady employment. She understands why benefits matter. She understands why a person might be too burned out to think beyond the next paycheque. That understanding makes her especially effective when members are facing layoffs or trying to navigate the volatility that can be part of construction life.

On top of it all, Tenille brings something deeply valuable to women in the trades. Having spent years as one of only a few women on crews and in yards, she understands both the practical barriers and the strain that can come with the work. She speaks candidly about everything from the lack of proper washrooms on site to the need to establish firm boundaries and prove, over and over, that “yeah, a woman can really do it.” That experience now allows her to support younger women entering the industry.

“You have every right to be here,” she tells them. She has mentored workers who were hesitant to speak up and watched their confidence grow. In one case, she supported a woman who secured a significant raise after the union stepped in. In another, she encouraged a labourer to try equipment operating; that worker is still in the role and has since become a steward. For Tenille, that kind of progress matters. It means the road may be a little easier for the next person.

WHAT TENILLE BRINGS TO HER work as a CLAC representative is more than an impressive list of former jobs. It is the perspective that comes from building a life through many kinds of work and many kinds of risk. It is the discipline of a family rooted in the trades, the resilience of someone who has rebuilt after setbacks, the confidence of a woman who learned to succeed in male-majority spaces, and the credibility of a worker who has done the hours herself.

That may be the clearest explanation of why members respond to her. Not long ago, she was one of them. And while her days are vastly different now, the instinct behind her work remains the same: look after people, do the job well, and never lose sight of what the work really demands.

Tenille Kowalchuk

The Road to Representative

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