School District 27 (SD27) held their annual Heavy Metal Rocks event for 100 Mile House students in Grades 11 and 12 last Thursday and Friday.
The event, which took place at Scott Pit not far from the Exeter Industrial Area, saw students operate heavy-duty equipment from excavators to graders and rock trucks to bulldozers, all under the supervision and instruction of industry professionals. Local companies including Dawson Road Maintenance, SMS Equipment and Tolko Industries donated the heavy machinery.
Students who don’t yet know what they want to do with their careers decided to attend Heavy Metal Rocks, such as Charlotte Oliver, a Grade 11 student attending Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School.
“I don’t even know if this would be a main career that I would go into, I just think it’s good to have as an option,” Oliver explained.
Oliver says that her favourite type of machinery to work with was the grader, a form of heavy equipment with a long blade used to create a flat surface during grading commonly used for snow removal and leveling a construction site.
Another student at the event was Grade 11 student Ivan Pincott, who wants to have a career in forestry. His personal favourite heavy machine to operate was the excavator.
“They’re very versatile and enjoyable to operate,” explained Pincott. Despite this, Pincott does have a liking for the other machines that were in Heavy Metal Rocks.
“I enjoyed the skid-steer, the wheel loader and the bulldozer.”
Pincott has no plans to go to post-secondary education and instead wants to go right into forestry. He added that his family has a history in forestry and he’s already gotten the chance to work as a logger with them.
“I’ve done bits of it here and there with my father,” said Pincott.
This year’s Heavy Metal Rocks marks the fourth time it has been held in 100 Mile House and the last time long-time organizer David Corbett will be at the helm. Corbett, SD27’s district principal of career education, is retiring at the end of this year and said he has some fond memories of Heavy Metal Rocks.
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“One is the kindness of people, to donate equipment and time because they see the vision, that’s huge, and two is to see students at the end of the day work hard, are tired, but are so excited for what they’ve been learning and doing,” Corbett remarked.
After retiring from education he plans to “just be a grandpa” and work in a different capacity. He remarked he may even return to Heavy Metal Rocks in the future, this time as a trainer.
His successor, Calvin Parent, the vice-principal of career programs with SD27, said this was his first time attending Heavy Metal Rocks and he liked what he saw.
“Coming out and seeing it from start to finish, it is such an excellent program,” Parent noted, adding that he liked the program because it gives the kids the ability to form decisions down the road based on their experience at Heavy Metal Rocks.
“They’re very excited and anticipating and looking at the machines, and they’ve done awesome,” noted Parent about the students.
Many of those training students themselves took the program in their youth. One of these veterans was Mark Grant, who attended the first incarnation of the training program when it was introduced in 1979. Grant said that Heavy Metal Rocks made it easy to make operating heavy machinery into a career.
“If it wasn’t for Heavy Metal Rocks back in the eighties, it would have been super tough to get into it,” Grant remarked.
Grant observed that a student’s gender seemed to influence how they operated the equipment.
“Females are a lot better operators, males are more aggressive - get it done quick, the ladies would go in there and might take longer but at the end of the day, do a way better job.”