Who I Am
May 19, 2013 1:08 pm Leave your thoughts
I’m Kyle Waterman, and I was born and raised in southern Ontario and lived most of my life in the city of Peterborough. I lived there till I hit high school then moved to a small town of Havelock where I learned most of my forestry practice through a very cool program that, over 3 years, taught me how to fell trees, run sawmill equipment and work in different areas of the forestry world. After high school I worked on fire suppression units with pipe layout and planning; however, I always wanted to go back to the forestry field. After a couple of years of doing that and being manager at a small time logging company, I went to Fleming collage for two years of my life to take Forestry Tech and will be going back to take Urban Forestry, then, hopefully, go to Lakehead University. But before Urban Forestry, I will be working at Millar Western for a four month placement. I have worked or been in many different fields in the forestry world and love to keep learning more!
Here is a cake my loving sister made for me from
scratch. She is currently taking a culinary course here
in Ontario. I thought the cake was amazing, but she
didn’t like how it came out very much.
Quest for Alberta
Because I’m currently writing this blog it means I won an internship with Millar Western under the Green Dream Contest! I started my trip from southern Ontario all the way to Whitecourt. Alberta. The trip took me three days in total and was very exhausting. I left on a Tuesday morning and arrived Friday night. Millar Western heard I was staying in my truck as I traveled to the west. They didn’t want me to unpack everything late at night once I entered Whitecourt, so they paid for a nice hotel for me to stay in overnight and paid for a nice warm breakfast in the morning. It was a good break from sleeping In the backseat of the truck. To help me with my travels, my folks came up with me and towed the car behind them. This made driving a lot more easy and safe. Once the sun came up, we awakened after a nice sleep in a warm cozy bed and headed off to Millar Western’s head office to meet with the staff and acquire my keys to my apartment. I was welcomed with smiles, and even my parents were brought in to talk with the staff and had the opportunity to ask some questions. After I got the keys to my apartment, I unpacked my things and headed out to explore the area and get use to the town over the weekend.
First Week and Orientation
After I spent the weekend relaxing, getting used to the time zone and exploring the area, I had my first day on the job Monday. I was nervous – unsure if my skills would allow me to give something back to the company or if what I learned in Ontario could help me at all in Alberta. But once I arrived at the training center and sat down in a circle with many different summer students, I realized they were all like me, nervous and ready to showcase their skills. After we went through all of our paperwork, I found myself more at ease and ready for the rest of the day. Through the day, I met many people all with smiles and excited to meet the new intern. After meeting everybody, I spent the rest of the day going over there rule books and codes.
I awoke the next day all excited and ready for whatever the day could bring me and headed into work. I spent the day going through the mill and taking a tour throughout the camps in the surrounding area and tried to, on my ride, quiz myself on all the different codes and regulations. My roommate just arrived the night before from Vancouver and, once work was done, I took him around to explore the area.
I spent the next two days working on ArcMap and feeling like I was actually doing something really important for Millar Western and really enjoyed myself. I started to make friends in the office and make good impressions on the people around me. I even got invited to go out on road trip to go tear down a beaver dam! This was the first beaver dam I have ever seen and really had fun taking it down and seeing the roads the beaver flooded out come back to normal.
The last day in the week I spent going over off-road training and ATV training. Because of the lack of limestone and rock, driving in the woods or through dirt is a very different experience from Southern Ontario. Plus this got me out of the office, where I was working on maps, and I really got to enjoy the forest and its surroundings.