28 BCBUSINESS JULY/AUGUST 2019
If you look up at the second-floor walkway, with its metal
bannister skirting a succession of tall, narrow doors, it's sud-
denly clear that this was once a jail. But rather than guards
and inmates, about a dozen tradespeople occupy the space.
Dressed in steel-toe boots, work pants and T-shirts, with bulky tool pouches
slung around their hips, they pound and drill, creating a buzzing, discordant
symphony to a remarkable metamorphosis.
On the ground floor of the stripped-down interior, a living room with an
enormous fireplace is taking shape while a former guards' area is being reborn
as a games zone. With help from more than 500 volunteers and 120 businesses,
this building near downtown Victoria, previously the Juvenile Detention Facil-
ity, is being transformed into a peer-to-peer recovery centre. Renamed Our
Place Therapeutic Recovery Community, it will offer a voluntary two-year,
community-based program for 50 men who have suffered trauma, addiction
or homelessness or who aspire to a new life after incarceration.
There's another metamorphosis going on here. Like most construction
sites, Our Place hosts young, inexperienced workers getting hands-on train-
ing. But in contrast to similar locales, all 25 of them are women, students
from the 12-week, female-only Trade Skills Foundation program offered by
Victoria's Camosun College.
28 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER 2019
ON POINT
When electrician Sandra
Brynjolfson started in
the trades 20 years ago,
women on the job were
a rare sight