Metal Fabrication Shop To Open On Tobique First Nation
FREDERICTON — After working for Irving Shipbuilding, in a welding shop, and a carpentry shop, Candice Perley plans to open her own metal fabrication shop on the reserve next spring.
MC Metal Fabrication is based out of Tobique First Nation, with Perley’s welding partner Matt Quinn. They work by commission, through Facebook, or word of mouth, using a shipping container as their workshop.
“We want people to come to us and ask us for anything,” said Perley. “We love what we do and we just want to do it on the reserve rather than for other companies.”
There aren’t any metal fabricators in the area doing the same thing as Perley. This month she is featured on Indigeshop, where she showcases her work with metal and wood, selling shelves, welcome signs, and trailers.
Some of MC Metal Fabrication’s most recent projects have been a large metal poppy for Remberence Day, and ice fishing poles equipped with beer holders. Another customer requested a truck rack and a repaired tailgate.
“Our jobs are really, really random, we never know what we are going to get,” she said.
Perley said she and Quinn are creative and said that, if it’s steel they can make it. At other jobs, welding the same thing every day got repetitive. She said doing custom is more exciting, and pushes her to learn new skills.
Perley started welding at NBCC College in Woodstock at 24, with hopes of being an underwater welder.
“I would drive an hour one way every day and an hour back just to go to school,” said Perley.
After graduating with honours, she worked at BWS Manufacturing, a welding shop in Centerville. She loved welding but didn’t like working for them.
She saw that Irving shipbuilding was looking for Aboriginal fabricators from different reserves. After being accepted into the program she went to school for Metal Fabrication in Novia Scotia, driving back every weekend to see her kids.
Post-graduation students were guaranteed a job on Irving’s shipyard. Every time they would visit, Perley reminded them that even though she was in school to do metal fabrication, she wanted to be a welder.
“To other people, it seems the same but at the shipyard, it is completely different,” said Perley. “Only the fitters can make things and pack them together and use the cutting torch and the welders can only weld — they can only make things.”
Perley was hired as an apprentice welder and worked there for a year until her mom got sick. She decided to move home, her welding partner Matt Quinn coming too.
Both got jobs at the manufacturing shop where Perley used to work. As the only female in the shop, she noticed men treating her differently.
“People would always come over and help me even if I didn’t need help, they’d help me lift things and flip things and try to give me advice, but they never help any of the other males in the shop,” she said.
She kept being placed on the smaller parts of the assembly line. She got tired of co-workers thinking that she couldn’t do as much as them, especially when she passed all her welding tests on the first try.
Frustrated, she took a leave from that job and worked as an apprentice carpenter at Tobique Capital.
“I was doing that for over a year and I liked it, but it’s not the same to me,” said Perley. “It’s not my passion like welding is.”
So she reached out to JEDI, a non-profit that supports Indigenous entrepreneurs, asking them if someone could help her write a business plan. They told her about their Indigenous Business Incubator Program, which she applied to and was accepted.
RELATED: JEDI’s Incubator Pitch Day Showcases Eight New Indigenous Businesses
In the program, she made projections for material costs, cost of labour, cost of goods sold. She said everything she didn’t know about opening your own business was overwhelming at first. Then she would imagine herself working in the container with speakers blaring.
Having a shop in her backyard would provide fabrication and welding to people within her community, something she wants to support and help grow.
Perley is trying to get an SVB and the grant money to buy tools, like a plasma cutter.
“I just remind myself how badly I want this business to work,” said Perley. “That’s my motivation every day.”
Rachel Smith is an intern with Huddle. Send her story suggestions: s[email protected].