By Katie Mercer
Canwest News Service

Bernie Phillips is building the framework for trades training in his community.

It isn’t the trade he pictured himself in when he started out as a carpenter 15 years ago. Then again, he sort of fell into it.

After high school, Phillips began working in the forest industry but switched to carpentry after a co-worker accidentally felled a tree on him, dislocating his hip.

"They were building houses on my street, so I walked up to the job site and handed in a resumé to the foreman," the Red Seal-certified journeyman carpenter said.

Eight months later he was enrolled in an entry-level training program at the B.C. Institute of Technology in Burnaby. He lived in the city for three years, then chose to commute 21ž2 hours each day from Mt. Currie and back so he could spend more time with his two children. The city was too fast-paced, Phillips said, "and I missed my daughter’s birthday and missed her growing up for two years. I couldn’t take it anymore."

Phillips is part of the Lillooet nation and grew up in Mt. Currie surrounded by his friends and family. Community has always been a large part of his life, so naturally he jumped at an opportunity to work as an instructor in the Construction Orientation and Retention for Employment Foundation (CORE) when he was offered a position in 2004.

For two years, Phillips estimates, he helped train between 280 and 300 people in his Mt. Currie band for entry-level skilled-trades helpers and skilled-labourer positions in the construction industry.

In 2006, the CORE job led Phillips to a position as a job coach at the Vancouver Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Society (VanAsep). "With VanAsep, I acted as a liaison between employers and employees, breaking down barriers so I can keep First Nations employed, because so many fail in the first years," he said, adding he would explain First Nations customs and traditions, such as four-day funeral gatherings, to employers.

"First Nations have different traditions, and sometimes using our traditions can get us fired or laid off, and we don’t want First Nations people abusing them."

Impressed with his mentoring abilities, VanAsep sent Phillips to Arizona State University last year to take a project management program. This year he ended his coaching career and went back "to swinging the hammer," working with a framing company and a business he and his wife, Lucinda, had been operating. He never expected that his own community would soon after ask him to spearhead a carpentry program at the Ts’zil Learning Centre in Mt. Currie, which runs in partnership with Capilano College.

"When I first got out of high school I wanted to be a PE teacher, so teaching was always in my plans, I just didn’t know it was going to be in carpentry," he said, adding he’s waiting to start his diploma program to become a certified instructor.

"In the future I hope to continue to be employed for my band and with them construction is going to be a big part of future plans because we’re always building houses," he said. "Mentoring is an important role. A lot of people do fail in the first year and if they have someone as a good job coach . . . if we help them through it, they can be successful."