Over the intervening 150 years, wages have escalated, while everything individuals spend money and the personal debt they carry have skyrocketed. An employee today gets at least $14 every hour, while Muskoka’s skilled trade workers pull in multiples thereof.
What has not changed is that good workers are still difficult for Muskoka employers to find. New hires fail to show up; substance abuse curtails performance of a rising number holding good jobs; others have a preferential dependency on poggie; and employees leave to set up sub-contracting operations, from roofing to carpet installation, with decidedly mixed results. These developments, along with matters of training, productivity, and remuneration, are engaging Muskoka’s employers, unions, apprenticeship and training instructors, entry-level and retraining workers, and a swatch of government representatives.
A specific challenge concerns trades vanishing due to changing technology. Last month CBC Radio carried a story about the last shop still repairing manual typewriters closing its door for good. Bracebridge cobbler Brian Shelly skilfully sews leather shoes and boots, but knows he’s a vanished breed of artisan. “There are about twenty profitable shoe repair stores in Ontario up for sale by retiring owners,” he told me, “but no buyers, because nobody now can operate these specialized sewing machines.” When Liz Rice was publisher of the Forester, she and I traded jokes about “the last living linotype operator in North America.”
Our families had been printing newspapers for generations, back to the era of hand-set wooden and metal type. A linotype machine revolutionized typesetting. When I was operating one by age 14, my grandfather assured me I’d always have a trade to fall back on in life. Since then the graphic arts have undergone two complete revolutions, first “cold type” printing, then digital. The only use left for my cherished skills in hot-metal typesetting is explaining to folks how one of the world’s most ingenious machines once worked.
What if you were operating steamship RMS Segwun which anchors Muskoka tourism and generates a battalion of local jobs? For two decades John Miller, president of Muskoka Steamships at Gravenhurst, has sought steam engineers for Segwun’s roster, without success, his main discovery being that New Zealanders operating steamer Earnslaw are, well, in the same boat.
This is our challenge of sustainable heritage. The steam era was overtaken by electric motors, diesel engines, and jet propulsion. Advent of these alternate technologies first displaced skilled workers. Then, within a generation or so, high-paying specialized tasks languish because there’s nobody left to perform them.
Anyone wanting a steam engineer’s “ticket” – the government certificate that one is qualified to operate steam engines – should apply while the skills can still be passed on, for everything old is new again, and in Muskoka “competent hands can secure good wages.”
