Kuujjuaq tradesman: study, hard work are essential

Daniel Gadbois, 29, stands by one of the many electrical boxes he set up in Kuujjuaq’s future suites hotel. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

As the electrician on the project to wire Kuujjuaq’s future suites hotel, Daniel Gadbois says he needed to make sure every part of the work was up to the stringent codes established for such a structure. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

A view of the new block of rental suites in Kuujjuaq which electrician Daniel Gadbois wired. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

KUUJJUAQ — When Hydro Québec technicians switched on the power June 4 at the new apartment block of rental suites under construction in Kuujjuaq, electrician Daniel Gadbois was there.

The many miles of wire that Gadbois laid over the past four months finally carried electricity.

Gadbois, a young Inuk, also a full-fledged master electrician, is an all-too-rare success story in Nunavik, where many youth lack the education needed for trades and other technical or administrative occupations.

At 29, the trilingual Gadbois already holds journeyman’s papers in industrial electricity, which allow him to install, maintain, test, troubleshoot and repair industrial electrical equipment and electrical and electronic controls.

Until about a year ago, Gadbois worked as an apprentice electrician at the Raglan mine.

Now, Gadbois is back home, starting up his own company in Kuujjuaq and getting “busy, busy, busy.”

Happy to work back in his hometown, Gadbois said he’s determined to bid for — and work on — the many contracts guaranteed to flow from mining and other developments in Nunavik.

While young Inuit electricians are rare in Nunavik, there’s no real secret to how Gadbois, the son of Claude and Lizzie Gadbois, got to where he is today: his path to being a master electrician is all about study, hard work and determination, as well as support from his family, the regional government and his employers.

Heading into his final year at Collège Marie-Victorin in Montreal, Gadbois suddenly decided instead to take a two-year course in industrial electricity in Quebec City.

That’s because, as he tells it, he always “liked working with my hands” and couldn’t see himself in an office.

So, Gadbois headed off — alone — to study in the city at Centre de formation professionnelle de Québec, where he didn’t know anyone and struggled at school with learning complex French words.

But he learned the terminology, settled in and soon became top in his class.

The course was tough, but “what I got there they don’t give in the North,” he said.

To become an industrial electrician, Emploi-Québec says you must possess a vocational diploma in electricity and electro-mechanics of automated systems and qualify for a diploma of collegial studies in computerized systems technology and industrial electronic technology.

To advance to the status of journeyman electrician, you must also complete an 8,000-hour apprenticeship period, which can include training if required.

For his apprenticeship as an electrician, Gadbois returned to Kuujjuaq where he started working as an apprentice with the maintenance department of Kativik Regional Government, which had helped him continue his education in the South through its employment department.

But for his daughter to learn English, Gadbois decided to head south, where he settled in the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil and started commuting north, working the next three years with the company, Nunavik Construction, at the Raglan mine site.

There, Gadbois worked 77 hours a week, 250 hours every three-week rotation, and accumulated the 8,000 hours he needed to finish his apprenticeship.

That’s generally hard to do in Nunavik communities because master electricians, who must supervise electricians, usually stay only seasonally, so it’s hard to amass the hours you need to get those 8,000.

Intensive work at the Raglan mine site with Nunavik Construction, the company Gadbois worked for, provided him that opportunity, along with other Nunavik apprentices-in-training.

Known for their skill and speed, he and the others became known as the “Team Inuit,” Gadbois said.

After racking up those 8,000 hours, Gadbois also had to pass the hard three-hour qualifying exam with 70 questions and just a little over three minutes per question to figure out the answers.

With his new license as an electrician in hand, Gadbois and his family decided to come back to Kuujjuaq — again for his daughter, now seven, to relearn Inuttitut.

“The language is important,” said Gadbois, who switches easily between Inuttitut, French and English.

Still working 10 hours a day, Gadbois is his own boss: he can go out on the land during the weekends and be at home every night with his family, which now also includes a young son and his partner Melinda whom he recently married.

Working on the building of rental apartment suites, owned and built by Sammy Duncan, who at 39 is also a local success story as a businessman, was a good feeling — shared by Duncan who said he was pleased to hire another Inuk for the huge wiring project.

While the sight of all the wires, still exposed in the new building due to finished by the end of the year, is impressive, Gadbois said the electrical work was straightforward and much less complex that the industrial jobs he and the other members of “Team Inuit” tackled at the mine.