Robert J Vidler, our Canada Exchange Ambassador for 2018 landed safely and is thoroughly enjoying his work experience in Canada.
My Canadian experience has exceeded all expectations thus far.
On Saturday, Myself and ECA’s Donna Faulkner were escorted by Karen Mclean from SkillSource and her husband Chris to various locations around Vancouver. Highlights include the Sea to Sky Gondola above Howe Sound, Lunch at Cactus Club Cafe on English Bay beach and a brief tour of Stanley Park.
On Monday, I met Amy Powers from Skillsource who drove me to BCIT (still not quiet confident driving on the WRONG side of the road).
I am really enjoying my week at BCIT as I prefer the way the classes are taught here. Everyone is focused on the same topic and therefore supported without distraction. We focused on trigonometry and pitching roofs, which of course was made harder given that it was partially done using imperial measurements.
Friday was my last day at BCIT School of Construction and the Environment. I really enjoyed my time there and didn’t want to leave. I learnt so much- mainly to do with pitching roofs, trigonometry, mathematics and angles. (Never really learnt it when I was younger).
I met some pretty amazing people including students, Marita, Derek the carpentry teacher and Don the Cheif head of carpentry. Derek was so patient and helpful with any questions I had and his methods of making sure myself and the other students understood were exceptional!!
I also had the pleasure of meeting Alexander and Raphael from the High Performance Building Lab who work on different ways to reduce climate change and emissions,with a focus on producing clean energy.
They showed me two of the projects they were working on:
The first being the insulation systems to keep the warmth in and the cold and moisture out while using minimal energy. Builders and carpenters must keep up with regulation and code to ensure these requirements are met.
The second was a unit to burn scrap timber and produce clean energy for heating instead of costly dumping tons of waste into landfill each year.
Thank you so much for this great opportunity! I sure will miss this place and all the people I had the pleasure of working with.
I thought it would be much warmer given that summer here starts on 21/6 but it is actually colder than when i left Australia. You can see snow on the tops of the northern mountains from almost anywhere.
The Canadian lifestyle doesn’t seem so different to ours, they love their sport and enjoy their beer but apparently they don’t “put a shrimp on the bar-b” .(lol)
