So everything was off to a positive start. Hundreds of the most 'promising' journey person carpenters Ontario wide gathered here in Las Vegas to be trained to be more involved and progressive leaders in our trade and union, they call it 'transformational' leadership.
Anyway I was shocked to see most of our literature and instructors vocabulary still uses 'journeyman' instead of the more accepted term of the last decade or longer; 'journey person.' (You know because not only are there thousands upon thousands of women in our trade, but theres another organization promotimg diversity called 'sisters in the brotherhood' that has grown quite large. I wonder if theyre accepting trans women.. Im going off on a tangeant.. I apologize..)
Anyways now that theyve split the class into smaller classes, when my instructor goes on to describe how important amd influential women, the original founding members wives, were in making the carpenters union what it is today, naturally the boys gotta pipe up with;
'Why did we have to let them (women) into OUR union anyway?!'
'They're a distraction!'
'They're weak and lazy!'
'They're dangerous!'
...Utterly disgusted. This is the attitude of some of our best ans brightest stars from Canada, the land of tolerance.
There are a couple women attending right now, not to mention more than half of our instructors are also women. Not surprising these paragons of masculinity had to pick their moment when they thought we were all out of earshot..
On a positive though, aside from having to wear this goofy golf shirt;
Im having a blast just admiring the training centre itself and all the displays of antique woodworking tools throughout the compound. (17 acres of awesomeness, Im getting my steps in this weekend for sure..!)
