Outdoor Ed-Venture

It took a one-year sentence at Milner Ridge Correctional Centre to make Trenton Smith, 26, see he was headed down the wrong path.

Leaving his wild life behind him, Trenton Smith is turning his passion for the wilderness into a full-time career with help from the Manitoba Eco-Guiding Enterprise.

"I got involved in [dealing drugs] as a teenager," Trenton says. "I grew into it with my cousins. Once I stopped going to school, I moved in with them and started doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing and ended up in jail...that's when I realized it wasn't for me."

As it turns out, the key to a brighter future for Trenton lay in his talent for guiding others down the right path. And as fate would have it, Trenton's release coincided with the start of a new pilot project that was training participants as professional wilderness guides.

Trenton was hooked. He applied and was accepted into the Manitoba Eco-Guiding Enterprise - a program developed and delivered through SEED Winnipeg with support from United Way.

"I like the outdoors...I did lots of fishing as a kid," Trenton says. What he hadn't done until then was maintain a steady job or stable income. "I left school after grade 10...I've had jobs here and there but I've never kept them."

Since September 2009, Trenton has been earning $9/hour working 35 hours/week as an eco-guiding participant. The stipend helps supplement the cost of groceries, rent and other living expenses. For Trenton, the opportunity to earn a living while training for a career doing something he loves was just the incentive he needed to commit like never before. "It's something I really wanted to do."

Along with 14 other full time participants, Trenton has spent the past 10 months in the classroom and wilderness, earning no less than 13 certifications. But rather than simply learning to fish and hunt, students are also learning to run businesses, says program manager Brad Franck.

This summer, program graduates Trenton (far right), Darren and Junior are earning a living and valuable work experience as fishing guides for employer Lee Nolden (second from left), who says he's also gaining insight, "about the issues and problems facing Winnipeg's inner city and people from different socio-economic backgrounds."

The goal is to create meaningful, year-round job opportunities and quality wages for people with a passion for the outdoors, Brad says. Created primarily for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people, it's also a chance for participants to reconnect with cultural traditions and a heritage of Aboriginal people sharing and working together - consistent with the worker's co-operative model, which the program ultimately hopes to develop.

"So eventually, [participants] would all be owners of a year-round business doing all kinds of wilderness-related activities," Brad says. "In the summer, some might be fishing guides while others might be doing eco-tours: canoeing, edible plant walks, hiking, rock climbing. In the fall, some might be hunting guides, while others might be getting ready for winter camping. In the winter, there might be all kinds of snowshoeing and even some adventure travel, like snowmobile trips or ice fishing."

Instead of competing with other lodges and outfitters, it is the vision of the eco-guiding co-operative to offer support to existing businesses struggling with high turnover due to the seasonal nature of the industry and the somewhat transient nature of guides who often find it difficult to be away from home for extended periods. A co-operative presents a way for guides to rotate in and out, at the same time capitalizing on individual skills and marketing their own tourism products and packages through the slow seasons, Brad says.

Stories - Trenton's ed-venture That's good news for people like Lee Nolden, owner of a fly-in fishing lodge on God's Lake, Manitoba, which employs an average of 20 fishing guides each year. "Theres a good need for quality, trained professional guides," he says. Once typically a summer job for university students, clients and lodges are demanding a certain level of professionalism these days in view of the rising costs of eco-tourism, says Lee, whose lodge hosts guests from around the world.

"When people travel to a different country, they want to know about the culture, the local flora and fauna, so there's a variety of information you need to be an effective guide. These people have that experience. As a group, they speak nine languages between them."

In this dynamic group, Trenton has emerged as a leader with a propensity for comic relief - qualities integral to a good guide, Brad says. And qualities that are now being tested at Lee's lodge where Trenton and two others are working as fishing guides for eight to 10 weeks this summer. The trio are among 10 participants who graduated on May 25 at a ceremony held at the Manitoba Metis Federation.

"I'm proud of myself - I did it," says Trenton, who credits this opportunity and the girlfriend he met just prior to his incarceration with his success. "It's because of her and this program that I'm doing so well right now...I want to keep following the right path and hopefully do good with the rest of my life."

In the fall 2010, the group will reconvene for the second phase of the program, following individual placements and internships. That's when they'll work together to finalize the business plan for the co-operative and begin marketing their products and services.

And Trenton plans to be right there alongside the others. "Like I told Brad in the beginning of this program, I'm here to stay. I want to finish this."