Vancouver poet and creative writing teacher Kate Braid talked via email recently with Lynne Van Luven about her new memoir, Journeywoman: Swinging A Hammer in a Man’s World, published in 2012 by Caitlin Press. She was frank about how little progress women have actually made in the trades over the past 30 years. Braid is working on a new book, which she suspects will be a book of essays.
Kate, you were a pioneer among women labourers in B.C. Does that designation feel foreign to you?
In spite of warnings in high school about “long-term goals,” my life has been basically one step after the other, mostly guided by gut instinct. In hindsight, that’s served me well – no way, as a girl growing up in the ‘50s, I could have ever planned to be a carpenter. So when people started using the word “pioneer,” I had to look over my own shoulder. Who? Now, I’m not sure if the word is a compliment or a curse. It tends to put people on pedestals, which makes me uncomfortable mostly because it says, “You (Person On Pedestal) can do that but I never could,” and my work since I started in the trades in 1977 has been to encourage more women (and men) to join me.
Do you think the status of women in trades has improved since the 1970s when you first began as a carpenter?
Alas, I know it hasn’t. The number of women in trades in BC in the ‘70s was 3%. The number of women in trades now (if you exclude chefs and hairdressers) is 3%. Same in the U.S. That, in spite of Affirmative Action laws (in the US), Human Rights and Charter laws (in Canada), role models, special groups and courses for women, etc. The number of women in traditionally male white-collar jobs like medicine and law and even engineering, is far higher, so clearly there’s something harder about breaking into blue collar work – and, I dare say, more resistance on the part of the men.
Often in your book, despite all the struggles you recount, you talk about how “empowering” it felt to be a woman who earned her living by the strength of her muscles and the sweat of her brow. Can you comment on that feeling?
It’s amazing, the confidence that being able to put up your own shelf gives you, let alone the confidence that comes from building your own house. As a woman, I knew I could enjoy my body for sex (though even this was not said overtly – mostly we were supposed to feel ashamed). And I could use my body below the wrists and above the neck for clerical work or teaching. But I was never told I could be physically strong, competent. I also learned – by going through the wonderful training called apprenticeship – that anyone can learn this. It isn’t a secret code men are born with; it’s a skill – like cooking – that even I could learn. Totally exciting!
You have taught carpentry and you have taught English and creative writing. What similarities have you found between the disciplines? What differences?
After 15 years of building, the hardest thing for me when I started teaching (initially, construction to BCIT carpenter apprentices) was not having a physical measure of what they’d learned at the end of a day. I used to literally want to take their heads between my hands and shake them, ask, “What’s in there? Did you get it? Anything?”
However, I’d always written. I kept copious journals throughout the construction years, loved poetry, and when instinct sent me back to school to take Creative Writing at UBC, I was more familiar with the implied, the almost, the unspoken – though the hardest thing for me there, was the ambiguous. Very funny for a poet, who dwells in the ambiguous! And in fact, that’s what I came to love most about teaching creative writing. As a carpenter, you build in a traditional, time-honoured, tested way, the same every time, though in fact the changes in conditions are endless so it’s always challenging. But there’s something about the physical groundedness of the work that’s deeply satisfying. Creative writing is different. Every word can take you in a different direction. It’s all ambiguity and suggestion, which is another form of truth. And both – carpentry and creative writing – are highly creative.
If you could wave your magical carpenter’s hammer, what change would you like to see for labourers in the province of British Columbia?
By “labourers,” do you mean construction workers? I’d want every student in the province to get their hands on blue-collar tools before they leave high school so they could seriously ask themselves before they graduate, “Is this something I’d love to do?” I’d like young women in particular to ask themselves this question.
Someone at BCIT once told me their biggest recruiting ground is a student in first-year university courses – young people who never thought of trades as a career, or who thought it was beneath them. If you want physical work, it’s fabulously rewarding, challenging and well paid. Tradespeople – good ones – have to be smart, and there’s a kind of quiet pride among them because at the end of the day, they can see exactly what they’ve done, how important it is, how long it will last. I loved that.