Drive to learn paying off!
Sean Gaskin’s recently-earned Journeyman status might be the end goal for a lot of his scaffolder workmates, but to the 28-year-old former Vancouver Islander, it’s just one more financial security blanket.
Gaskin – known to his final-year classmates as ‘the safety guy’ – appears headed toward a career in the construction safety business, but in his short 28 years, he hasn’t ever been afraid of a change in direction…as long as he could attack it flat out, and seemingly at the speed of light.
So who knows where he’ll actually end up? All we’re sure of right now is that he won’t end up poor along the way.
“My dad was always a bit cheap,” he says. “But he and mom were able to retire at 55 and enjoy a great life. Part of the values they taught me was to be ‘careful’ with my money,” says the Aluma scaffolder.
Sean says his father taught him that just because you have an education doesn’t mean you’re sure of a good income.
“That’s why I wanted my Journeyman scaffolding ticket. It’s harder work physically, but at least I know I’ll always be able to pay the bills and feed my (future) kids.”
“I apprenticed part time as an automotive technician when I was in my teens. Even though I ended up taking a different direction, it allowed me to save a lot of money on vehicles. I drive a ’91 Chevy pickup that I turned every bolt on. It’s perfect.”
After high school, Sean spent three years at the BC Institute of Technology taking the first part of an electrical program. Then he spent a year in an environmental diploma program.
That left him very deeply in student loan debt…which he proceeded to pay off with little more than a year of scaffolding, living in camp at Suncor as a 1st-Year apprentice.
In 2007-08 he became a process operator at Syncrude, at the same time as he began working on a 4th Class Power Engineering ticket distance education program from BCIT.
“I was too busy to complete it back then,” he says. “But I am still working on it.”
Sean’s safety fixation began, he says, one day when he was 4X4ing with friends in the Edson area and came across someone who had been very badly injured in a motorcycle crash.
“After I helped to save a guy’s life, I realized that I wanted to help prevent accidents happening to good people instead of reacting to them after they’ve happened.”
He took safety courses through his apprenticeship, and he has completed the Alberta Construction Safety Association safety officer program. That’s enabled him to enroll in the University of Alberta’s Occupational Health & Safety’s certification program.
Now that he’s become a Journeyman, Sean will continue working on his safety and power engineering certification.
He and his buddies will continue swapping car and truck engines on days off…and, somewhere amongst all that, he and his brand new wife will likely spend some time planning for those kids he was talking about never going hungry!
