After years of pushing to get trained in a specialization that she deeply believes in, Darci Doiron is finally starting to find her niche in the workforce.
The 34-year-old Tseshaht member is currently halfway through gaining practicum hours needed to become a certified yoga therapy instructor, while also using her expertise to work at the Kackaamin Family Development Centre in Port Alberni. Six years into her own sobriety, it’s a practice Doiron has used to find her own healthy balance.
“If you have addictions, you’re trying to escape,” explained Doiron. “I didn’t want to be with myself with these feelings, so I would escape through alcohol or marijuana or whatever it may be.”
Yoga enabled Doiron to learn how to sit with herself, something she believes can benefit others by honing the ability to understand internal body signals.
“We have the power to regulate our nervous system,” she said. “Yoga increases interoceptive awareness. That’s this internal awareness of what’s happening emotionally, mentally, physically. It’s a holistic practice that has helped me with grounding and coping.”
As the overdose crisis rages on, this could be particularly beneficial to First Nations, who face a fatality rate six times that of the rest of British Columbia’s population, according to the First Nations Health Authority. Last September the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council declared a state of emergency due to the opioid crisis and its underlying mental health issues.
Doiron has already applied her training to First Nations, and foresees yoga therapy being applicable to a range of issues, from youth suicide prevention to managing chronic pain and treating intergenerational trauma.
“I went out into a more remote Indigenous community and taught them nervous system regulation, breathing techniques, cortisol reduction, things like that,” she said. “When you have chronic pain there’s a constant holding pattern. Yoga will address those holding patterns and start to send different signals to the brain at the same time that the chronic pain is coming down.”
On April 10 Doiron shared how her career journey has progressed to the crowd at a job fair at the Alberni Athletic Hall, which was hosted by the Nuu-chah-nulth Employment and Training Program. After years of attempts, she got funding for a two-year yoga therapy program, which became available online after the pandemic. NETP paid for half of her schooling cost, the other portion covered by the Tseshaht First Nation.
“By the fourth time I applied for the same thing they saw my file, how many times I was applying for this,” said Doiron, who also benefitted by the school charging her half the cost of the course due to her being an Indigenous student. “I’m a single parent as well, so having the ability to do it online was something that appealed to me.”
The need that Doiron is tapping into is part of an ongoing demand in the region for health-related specialists, with nurses, care aids and mental health support topping the list of in-demand industries. This is particularly the case in Port Alberni, where more than one third of the 331 jobs advertised in March came from Island Health, according to the Alberni Valley Employment Centre’s listings.
Construction and building maintenance are also in high demand in the city, says NETP Manager Melanie Cranmer, as is early childhood education. While working with clients, her department encourages them to focus on how training and jobs can lead to their long-term career goals.
“What are their interests? What are the things that get them going and wanting to see themselves in five years?” said Cranmer. “We always make sure that we’re fitting them to the goal that they would like.”
NETP has also seen more elders come through their doors looking to re-enter the workforce, as daily costs increase beyond what a pension can shoulder.
“Elders are really suffering with their rate of CPP,” said Cranmer. “They want to get back into the job market…Rent is really high, food and gas too.”
Jobs increase, despite mill closures
Career options appear to be growing, despite the continued decline of Port Alberni’s forestry industry. Built on a reputation as a mill town, the city has been hit with major manufacturing facilities closing in recent years. Hundreds have been left out of work from the 2022 shutdown of the Alberni Pacific Division sawmill and the San Group’s mill closure south of the city last year.
Despite these closures hitting the historically foundational forestry industry, jobs keep coming up in Port Alberni. In March of this year the Alberni Valley Employment Centre posted 130 per cent more jobs than it had in March 2019. Sales and service comprised almost half of these jobs, which entails retail, cleaning, hospitality, serving and cooking occupations.
As the employment centre’s manager, in 2018 Bill Brown started seeing the local job market “tightening up”, as employers had trouble filling positions. After the lull of the pandemic, this need for workers intensified.
“Businesses had survived on grants and loans for a while, and there was all this pent-up energy to get the economy going again,” he said. “Job demand skyrocketed. That skyrocketing effect from the pandemic was heightened by the fact that older people were retiring from the workforce at a more rapid rate.”
Brown has seen newcomers help to diversify the city’s economy by opening up new businesses. Examples in the last five years are two breweries that have opened in Port Alberni, new bakeries across the street from each other on Argyle Street, as well as the more upscale Brie & Barrel and Antidote restaurants.
“Some of these local businesses that are opening recently, they’re people who have come from someplace else. They see an opportunity here that perhaps we don’t even recognize ourselves,” observed Brown. “Our economy is bringing in, somehow, more people that are looking for larger city-style amenities, and the market seems to be providing those.”
The Alberni Valley Employment Centre also serves the west coast communities of Tofino and Ucluelet, where companies are undergoing a hiring blitz. In March the employment centre listed 345 jobs for these small towns - more than Port Alberni and three times the number of jobs listed for Tofino and Ucluelet in March 2019.
“The west coast, they went through those ups and downs through the pandemic, and they realized they were caught short-handed when a boom of tourists showed up that they didn’t expect,” said Brown. “I think they’re gambling that the Canadian tourists who usually go south are going to displace the American tourists.”
