Some places will convince you that you need to take some amount of 'foundation' courses to enter the trades. Not true. Son is a plumbing apprentice, 4th year. He started down that road by simply getting a job as a labor at a plumbing company. The deal they set out, work as labour for 3 months, if everybody gets along still at the end of that time, sign him up for an apprenticeship using his original start date. He had worked with them for a year before doing the first year of school. He'll do 4th year school this fall, and likely have all the hours in for the apprenticeship when he starts, so the red seal plumbing ticket will be there shortly after finish.Shinyjetsyndrome wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:34 pm I really wouldn't mind learning a new skill or trade, but again the money aspect comes into play. I just don't have enough money for going back to school.
If you get on with a good outfit, you dont need to do school for quite some time, and when it is time for the 6 weeks of classes each year, you can draw EI over that time. Trick is, choose a trade that's in demand so you can find a place that'll hire you of the street without doing the optional 'foundations' courses.
And here's the big hint, in that respect, it's much like a flying job. You wont find that outfit in the big city because they tend to hire folks coming out of the foundation courses in the schools. But get away from the big city into the smaller towns, things change a lot, and those companies tend to hire more on attitude and availability and lots of companies will take somebody on as an apprentice without having been thru those courses.
FWIW, son has not missed a day of work thru this whole episode, in fact has ended up doing significant overtime. Turns out a lot of commercial establishments in his area took the shut down time to do a lot of remodelling and updating on the buildings.