Carpenters Union opens drywall apprenticeship training school in Sudbury, Ontario

Local 2486 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America is opening an apprenticeship drywall training school in Sudbury. Serving as a satellite training centre of the Ottawa Walls and Ceilings Training Centre, the new facility will be open to students throughout northern Ontario — including as far away as Thunder Bay.

At the end of every weekend for eight weeks straight Robert Rapp packed his bags, said goodbye to his wife Pam and two young children Jake and Bobbie, and made the 4.5-hour drive from his home in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario to Ottawa.

His long trek was to the Ottawa Walls and Ceiling Training Centre where Rapp took classes Mondays to Fridays to complete his drywall apprenticeship training.

Being that far from home five days a week wasn’t easy. Finding room and board on a small fixed budget rarely is. Back in Sturgeon Falls his wife had her hands full taking care of the kids. Life apart was challenging for both of them.

Rapp completed his final classes earlier this February and got his journeyman papers in March.

Today, drywall apprentices living in the north don’t have to go through the struggles Rapp and other apprentices faced having to travel to Ottawa, Toronto or Hamilton — the only cities where apprenticeship classes were held in the province until now. That is because Carpenters Local 2486 is opening the north’s first apprenticeship drywall training school in Sudbury.

The first class started Sept. 10th at the Local’s union hall in Azilda.

“Had this program been operating when I was in school, I would have been able to come home every night. Life would have been much easier,” says Rapp, noting that the drive to Sudbury is just less than an hour from Sturgeon Falls.

The timing of the new training centre couldn’t be better. There is a pressing need for drywall tradespeople in and around Sudbury.

The region could “easily use another 100 drywall mechanics,” says Tom Cardinal, northern Ontario business manager Carpenters Local 2486.

Currently Local 2486 Azilda has about 290 apprentices working in northeastern Ontario.

Cardinal says that Vale, Xstrata Nickel, FNX Mining Company and Cliffs are among companies with major construction-generating projects that add up to $6 billion or more.

To meet journeyperson qualifications, drywall apprentices must take two eight-week in-class courses and clock 5,400 hours of work in the field.

“That second eight-week course is especially hard for many apprentices to commit to because by the time they get to that stage in their apprenticeship they are a little older and often have responsibilities that get in the way,” — for example, maybe a home mortgage, car or truck payments and a family to support, explains Gabe Parent, business representative and organizer at the Local 2486.

A training centre right in Sudbury could make a big difference.

“I know a lot of guys in the field who put off doing their last eight-week class for years because they don’t want or can’t afford to travel all the way to Hamilton, Ottawa or Toronto for training,” adds Rapp, 28.

“They’ve been working at apprentice rates for years now and they have been in the union a lot longer than me.”

Parent, who completed his apprenticeship classes in the 1990s in Hamilton, knows how difficult being uprooted can be.

One of the key reasons Local 2486 worked hard to get funding from the province for the training school was to help keep northerners from leaving the trade or moving onto jobs in the non-union sector.

Serving as a satellite training centre of the Ottawa Walls and Ceilings Training Centre, the new facility will be open to students throughout northern Ontario — including as far away as Thunder Bay.

Rapp, who has two diplomas in the field of natural resources from Sault College, has no regrets leaving that career for the trade of drywall. Work in natural resources was spotty at the best of times, he says.