- by Paul Vanwyck

Today I attended the Nuclear Job Fair and Information Session, held at the Sydenham Campus in Owen Sound.

I’d been to a job fair there last month that had been organized for Tenneco employees and their families, and thought I’d come a little later to avoid the rush.

Apparently, it worked. Sort of.

The parking lots, including the one with the sign that says “no parking, lot not maintained”, were still both full when I arrived shortly after 6. But I was told that the crowd I encountered was nothing compared to the one earlier in the day.

The job fair, organized by Bruce Power and the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries, had more than 30 booths. These included three colleges and on-line learning, trade unions, employment agencies, and local and international businesses.

Personally, I’ll be out of work in the spring and am looking to transition to an apprenticeship in one of the trades, so those were the booths I focused on. Unlike the Regional Job Fair last February and the Tenneco job fair, I found the majority of the booths at the Nuclear Job Fair today to be of interest. Many I had seen before at the other job fairs, but it was great to have them all in one place.

Those attending the job fair when I was there were all adults, as opposed to the mix of teens that were at the Regional Job fair, and included a number of my co-workers.

The job fair ran from 2pm until 8pm. As I was leaving around 7 pm I had an éclair (courtesy of the Georgian College culinary course), and spoke to one of the people handling the door prize ballots. They said there’d easily been a thousand people through the job fair today, and told me that around 3pm the gymnasium at the former elementary school had reached capacity and they had job seekers lined up down the hall.

Here’s hoping that it was a productive day for many of us job seekers.