Surrey students flex trade skills, win medals at national competition

A pair of Surrey students is sporting some new hardware after competing at the Skills Canada National Competition in Winnipeg late last month.

The competition is the largest annual school trades event in Canada and this year’s event saw more than 500 students and apprentices come together in the Manitoba capital to compete in their respective trades.

Lord Tweedsmuir's Larissa Chong during her baking competition

Four students from Surrey travelled to the event, with two making it onto the podium:

• Larissa Chong, Lord Tweedsmuir. Grade 11 – Secondary Baking, Silver Medal
• Ayden Meinhardt, Kwantlen Park. Grade 12 – Secondary Electronics, Silver Medal

Grade 10 students Julie Southingavong and Winnie Wang from Fraser Heights Secondary also competed in Secondary 2D Animation. All four Surrey students qualified for the national event by winning gold in the Skills Canada BC Provincials held earlier this spring.

“All of our students did an amazing job and we’re so proud of them,” said Elizabeth Duffield, career facilitator and careers department head at Kwantlen Park Secondary. “The event itself was really great and it was quite something to see all of these students from across the country come together to compete in these very specialized fields.” 

Seen as a stage for students to explore trades and skills beyond the classroom, Duffield said the Skills Canada competition not only provides students with an outlet to continue the interests they’ve discovered in school, but to also accrue some accolades prior to beginning their post-secondary careers.

Fraser Heights Secondary's Julie Southingavong and Winnie Wang before their 2D animation competition.“One of our students, Ayden, applied to BCIT’s Mechatronics program and was accepted into the program partly due to his involvement with Skills Canada,” she explained. “It showed BCIT that he was serious about the trade and is already exploring it at a high level.”

Another key aspect of the competition was the connections made by the Surrey students with other like-minded students from all corners of the country.

“Our two Grade 10 students in particular, they may have been a bit nervous at first, but once they went for their first orientation, they met the others from their field and all became friends” she said. “So it was really cool to see them develop that companionship with the people that were essentially their competitors.”

Duffield hopes to see more Surrey schools send their students to compete in skills competitions next year, which is something the district's career team will be working to encourage.

“Fraser Heights tends to have a few students that go each year because the Fraser Heights department head is the Skills Canada representative for Surrey,” she said. “So next year we’re going to look at how we can try to get more students from across the district to come out and compete.”

For more information on the Skills Canada National Competition, click here.