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Graduates of the Mechanical Technician – Millwright program at Durham College (DC) have the experience and expertise to flourish in a wide range of careers and industries.
“Millwrighting is a trade where you have all sorts of different options,” said program coordinator Clair Cornish. “You can get into more heavy equipment maintenance and manufacturing. You can focus on very specific areas like hydraulics, pneumatics, and power transmission components. Or you can dig deeper into some of the more emerging technologies that utilize programmable logic controllers, electronic controls, and artificial intelligence.”
The breadth of options means that no two students are likely to follow the exact same path through their studies, apprenticeship training and career. While many will find work in power generation or the nuclear industry, others will spend their days working on amusement park rides or ensuring that food production plants operate as they should.
For Melissa Pigden, the path led to the City of Toronto. After graduating in 2022, she applied for an apprenticeship with the municipality and has spent the last four years building a successful career as an industrial millwright mechanic. After gaining experience in water treatment plants and supply pumping stations, she moved to a wastewater treatment plant. There, she finds that no two days are alike as she maintains pumps, centrifuges, and compressors.
“My work is quite diverse, which is why I love what I do,” she said.
Much of what she does today relates directly to her training at DC, where she gained hands-on experience with machining equipment, including a number of pumps, lathes and milling machines.
“The variety of equipment they have at DC really prepared me for what I would see in the field. The program definitely gave me the fundamentals to excel.”
It also gives students a head start on their career. Graduates are eligible for exemption from all the in-school requirements for IMM 433A apprenticeship training. Although employers can require their apprentices to complete additional in-school training, most employers who hire DC graduates don’t—a point of pride for Cornish.
“They find that graduates from our programs have the knowledge, skills, and abilities and they’re ready to get to work,” he said.
DC alumni like Pigden have built that reputation through hard work, both in the classrooms and labs at DC and in the workplace. For today’s students who are preparing for their own careers in the skilled trades, her advice is simple.
“Show up and be motivated. Be interested in the work and use the tools you have at DC while you’re there,” she said, pointing once more to the state-of-the-art equipment that’s available as well as the experienced faculty like Cornish who are always ready to share their expertise.
If they take full advantage of their time in the program, DC’s next class of Millwright graduates will find their own success, just as Pigden has.
“I look back at when I where I was seven years ago, and I look to where I am now, and I just see so much growth,” she said. “I owe that to the people I was able to surround myself with and learn from, at DC and now in Toronto.”
