Gillian Swindells was in her second year apprenticing as a glazier when
she got a good idea of what the real world would be like. Apprentices learn
their skills on the job and learn early what the job entails. Sometimes it
entails the unexpected.
Swindells, the daughter of a glazier, went to work at a commercial building
site. She started to handle a large sheet of glass, when she heard a voice
booming out: "Don't touch that! That's for the glazier!"
"When I told him I was the glazier, he didn't believe me at first. I had
to tell him who I work for. He was pretty embarrassed," she recalls.
Perhaps it's not too surprising. There are a handful of non-unionized women
glaziers, and unionized numbers are even smaller. It's common for glaziers
not to know of even a single female colleague.
While Swindells isn't sure she enjoys being a female in a nearly all-male
trade, she knows it's the right job for her. "I never wanted to be a secretary
or stare at a computer all day. I'd go nuts," she says.
Swindells says the work is tough. "You have to be very strong for this
job. I worked out on weights before I got into this. Now I don't have to.
At the end of the day, I just want to come home and play with my son."
Her biggest challenge right now is doing metal mechanics -- another part
of a glazier's job that involves building a frame for the glass to be placed
into.
"I can picture it in my head, and after it's all installed I can look at
it and say, 'Wow!' I did one recently [for a local business] and when my son
and I walked in the doors, he looked up at me and said, 'You put those doors
in, didn't you Mom?'"
While some say the construction business isn't the most stable field to
get into, Swindells is confident she's made the right choice.
"There are more people putting up buildings today than ever before and
there's always windows and doors to put in. All the buildings now are glass.
It may be steel and concrete to create the main structure, but everything
else is glass."
Glazier work also runs through the veins of Trevor King, who came to the
field after working in his father's shop as a youngster. "I got my driver's
license and my dad bought me a car. So to pay for the car, I worked at my
father's glass company. It was a full fabrication shop, so I did commercial
work and residential work and buildings under six floors."
Commercial glass offers greater scope. Also, the larger the piece of glass,
the more flex in it. A windy day could turn into a nightmare for a glazier
who doesn't know how to handle it properly.
"You've got to be very careful with it," King says. "Most people don't
understand that glass is really a slow moving liquid. That's why in old houses
you'll see window panes where the glass is distorted. That's
because the glass has reacted to the force of gravity over the years. It's
like a caramel coating slipping."
One of the more interesting projects King has worked on was the construction
of a butterfly house. "It was an inverted glass cone with the top cut off
at an angle," he says. The project proves that glass can be used for anything
-- and will be around for a while.