English Plant Man in Canada (Part One)

Thanks to the power of the professional social media platform Linkedin, I was recently contacted by Tom March who decided to move out to Canada back in 2012, he was keen to tell me about his adventures which I’m hoping will evolve into a series of posts over the coming months.

Tom had served his apprenticeship with Scot JCB out of their Carlisle depot where he had spent a total of 5 years working, but had an urge to try something different, Tom takes up the story, “I felt at 21 years old I had lots that I still wanted to do and see, and if I stayed at the same dealership my whole career, I would miss out on a lot of different experiences to make me a well-rounded Engineer. I had always fancied Canada but didn’t know a thing about how to get out there”.

“The morning after night of go karting and a few beers for a mate’s birthday, I went for a walk to get a newspaper. I found a recruitment posting for ‘Heavy duty mechanics Canada’ I showed it to my friend who also apprenticed with me at Scots and without too much thought we both sent off a CV”.

“Not a week later we got emails back stating the Caterpillar dealer in Saskatchewan was hiring. The Vice President and recruitment agent flew over and interviewed us and about 40 other candidates. The rest is history. My Friend is still here and we are living in the same City”.

“After 4 years of being an employee I wanted to then scratch the itch of being self-employed. I bought a service truck and started the daunting task. At first it was hard to make contacts and get a foot in with companies but slowly it came good. I also challenged the Canadian Red seal exam which is the NVQ equivalent here”.

“It’s been a tough 8 years but lots of fun and wouldn’t change a thing. Missing out on home and family stuff is the hardest and I still miss the UK. The culture here is very work orientated. If you are willing to work long hours and days in a row you can do very well. I will return at some point to the UK to spend more time with my family before it’s too late but by then I will be a Canadian citizen with the option then to return at any time!”.

Canada is a country that has always appealed to me personally as a great place to live, sadly I’ve never been brave enough to make that big move and in all honesty its probably too late for me to even think about it now.

In part two we will take a look at some more of the work that Tom undertakes in Canada