Marc Paré

On his first day of work as a Mechanical Technician, Marc Paré already knew where he wanted to be later in his life.  He told his friends and his boss that one day, his goal was to be a managing engineer.

Marc continued to work and go to school part-time, at night.  It took him 8½ years to finish his engineering program. “I had a clear goal to improve my skills and get a better job.  In the end it paid off.”

He thinks having a goal is very important. “I would tell student to do that, sit down and think where they want to be five years from now.” But goals don’t just happen – students have to make them happen by working hard. “It’s called the 3-S approach.  Study, study, study!”

Marc thinks it is important for young Indigenous people to continue their studies at college and university because it gives you confidence in yourself and helps you learn to communicate better with other people. Engineering gives you the ability to look at a problem and think about it from all sides to solve it.

These type of skills, he says, are very important to Indigenous communities. “I think if we could have more people who are engineers or with university degrees, we could be self-sufficient.  There are lots of ideas in our communities, but not enough training in how to make the ideas real.”