In all my travels – trips representing APEGS, trips that were part of my job and trips just for fun – I have toured many different cities and places. On these trips, I have met a lot of people and always seem to encounter at least one or two from Saskatchewan.
In December 2004, I took a trip to Thailand for a month with a friend. We were going on a river raft tour in the middle of nowhere. On the bus to the launch, we discovered that of the four or five other people, two were from Saskatchewan.
On a trifecta sports tour in Phoenix, Arizona about 10 years ago, my husband and I wore our Rider jerseys with pride to a Cardinals game. What a beacon for other people from Saskatchewan! We had many people approach us to chat and talk about our other connections, but especially about our home province.
There have been times when my career could have taken me out of Saskatchewan. Two in particular come to mind. During the “brain drain” of the mid-80’s my father chased work and ended up moving to Alberta, taking the whole family except me with him. Having just finished my first year of university, I chose the wonderful opportunity to stay in Regina with my grandmother and finish university.
After graduation, many of my friends travelled to Ontario or Alberta to pursue their careers. I managed to find work in Regina just as I was packing my bags to pursue opportunities in Alberta. As time has moved on and people have started families, there seems to be a call home. Those Saskatchewan ties are strong and many of my friends have started coming back. There is a foundation here, a certain way of life (and a short commute!) that seems to be what people seek.
These thoughts remind me what it means to be “homegrown.” I am thoroughly and completely a Saskatchewan girl. Though I complain about the cold winters, I do love driving through this beautiful province, meeting great people and seeing the province in all its different sizes, shapes and colours.
It is also a point of pride to see the infrastructure that I have been part of creating, re-creating, maintaining and operating. Knowing many of the hands that have touched the fabric of our society and appreciating all of those that came before me, I am always excited to see and experience (and in my case as a designer of buried infrastructure, not see) our accomplishments.
Our local professional engineers and geoscientists are so important to how our society functions, but our works seem to go unnoticed for the most part, until they don’t work. People have grown to expect dependable internet, running water and toilets and the comforts of air conditioning. It is important that our communities are aware these conveniences are a result of the work of our professions.
Let children and students know that if they want to make lives safer and better, engineering and geoscience can give them that opportunity. We need to be proud and we need to trumpet our accomplishments. As professional engineers and geoscientists, let’s talk about what we do and how we support people having a better and easier life, and that we are doing it from home.