OLDS, Alta. – Joann Mathon sees nothing unusual about a woman scrambling up a combine to make repairs.
In fact, the 19-year-old agriculture mechanics student at Olds College plans to make a career of fixing farm machinery and working in the implement business.
Her efforts were good enough to win a $3,500 Persons Case scholarship awarded to Alberta students whose studies and career goals contribute to the advancement of women, or to people studying in fields where there are traditionally few members of their gender.
The award, established in honour of the 1929 court case recognizing Canadian women as persons under the law, is based on academic performance, program study and financial need.
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Mathon was one of eight to win and had to submit an essay on how she was treated in the workforce as a woman in a nontraditional position.
“At work I was sometimes known as Blondie or the Little Girl,” she said of her first job at a New Holland dealership last summer. The ribbing never bothered her because she saw it as part of workplace camaraderie. She said no one treated her as second class because she proved she could handle the work.
She is part of a new generation where young men do not feel threatened or at odds with a woman working next to them.
As for future problems, she believes she can manage treatment that might be less accepting by standing her ground and showing what she can do.
The world of mechanics came easily to her. Mathon grew up on a mixed farm near Innisfail, Alta., and was a willing helper when her father was repairing or rebuilding equipment and motor vehicles.
One of the family activities included rebuilding a 1951 Mercury.
While her family had no objection to her becoming a mechanic working with heavy equipment, some high school teachers spoke with her mother about her choice. Her mother supported her wishes.
About three-quarters of Mathon’s course was spent in the classroom, while the rest was in the shop rebuilding motors and overhauling farmers’ equipment. Farmers are invited to send machinery to the college where students overhaul it for the cost of parts.
In the early months of the program Mathon wondered if she had made the right decision. The classroom theory work was difficult and the physical side was grueling.
“There are a lot of physical aspects to this. If you are torquing down a 300 pound bolt, I have to do it in three turns because I’m not strong enough. There are times I need a power tool,” she said.
Other times she was stymied in figuring out what was wrong and what repairs were needed on a piece of equipment.
“Now I think, how could I not have known that?”
She finished her two years of study at the end of April and starts work as an agricultural equipment technician with Belsher Equipment, a New Holland dealership in Olds after completing apprenticeship exams in mid-May.
To become a journeyman she needs 1,500 hours of work per year for four years. She was credited with 300 hours for each year she attended college.
Tradesmen are in short supply in Alberta so she is confident of having a job for some time in the future.
“As long as I can stay in the industry, that is what I want to do,” she said.
