Her book traces a long list of ways in which Strasbourg has
followed her own advice for the last 20 years. First a referral
centre worker with Native Outreach in 1973, she became director of
field services as offices opened in Fort McMurray, Lac La Biche,
Grand Prairie, High Prairie and Calgary. A year later, she became
the first Native employment recruiter for Syncrude Canada. Her
goal was to see that Native workers numbered 10 percent of the
6,000 building the new oil sands plant, and she consistently met
her quota. She met with unions. She met with the president of
Syncrude. When she realized that the highly sophisticated
machinery required new training for people who lacked higher
levels of education, she worked with the Labourers Union and
Keyano College to create an Industrial Workers Course that fit the
bill. She worked with Social Services to see that new employees
had the boots, tool boxes, the job gear they needed. The first
woman to be Labour Foreman at Syncrude and Syncrude's first female
welder were Aboriginal women she placed there.
In Edmonton, she helped found the Native Women's Pre-employment
Training Program and subsequently has served on the board of
directors of the Métis Nation of Alberta; was president of the
Athabasca Native Development Corporation; a member of the Board of
Governors of Keyano College; inducted into the Métis Hall of Fame;
and for the last three years, served as co-chair of Region 10
Steering Committee, Commissioner of Services for Children and
Families. She speaks her mind and believes passionately in every
individual's right to education and opportunities to work.
Strasbourg is still particularly concerned about young Aboriginal
women who don't know that many agencies are available to help
them.
Her own experience taught her that a desperate young woman can
turn her life around in seemingly impossible circumstances. She
recalls that in 1957, when she came to Edmonton to start a new
life for herself and her children, "I was afraid. I came to
the city in February with no warm clothes, no job." She hasn't
forgotten how it felt to be hungry and cold, to lack
self-confidence.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
