Aiden Maher knew it was going to be a long day when he arrived at six o’clock in the morning on November 1st at TD Place field. The Ottawa REDBLACKS were playing that evening and after a day of pelting rain and high winds, Maher understood the field would need a lot of work to get it ready for the team’s final home game of the season.
The 23-year old Petawawa native had moved to Ottawa five years earlier to secure consistent work as a carpenter, but when he saw an advertisement for a job with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, he applied and landed a position helping to set up and tear down major events like concerts. He was working part-time in carpentry but thought the extra hours working in the entertainment business would help pay the bills.
After a few months on the job, Maher was asked, if he would be interested in helping the field preparation crew. He was curious about the work and once he started doing it, he really enjoyed it. He has now been doing it for five years as one of the organization’s leading Playing Surface Technicians, responsible for painting on both the TD Place field and the ice at the Ottawa Civic Centre.
“It’s a job that can be very demanding”, but Maher loves it. There is a lot of precision to the painting, whether it’s using a stencil to complete the Canadian Football League logo or it’s painting the numerals on the 110-yard long field. “There are some similarities in the carpentry work that I do in that you have to be really focussed to do the job well. Concentration is important,” says Maher.
After graduating from General Panet High School, Maher had enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship Construction Trades program at Algonquin College’s Pembroke Waterfront Campus in 2015. The program lasted six months and allowed Maher to complete level one of the theory portion of the carpenter apprentice training program. Students in the program also received a work placement experience, including a large group assignment to re-build Pembroke’s aging waterfront boardwalk.
“I enrolled because the program was free and I was always doing carpentry work when I was a kid. It was a great experience and got me started in my career,” says Maher. After finishing the program, Maher quickly found work in his trade, but when he was laid off from his job, he and his sister decided to move to the nation’s capital.
His first focus was on finding someone who would take him on as an apprentice so he could continue to hone his skills as a carpenter. It didn’t take long to find a small company that hired him on a part-time basis. That arrangement afforded him the opportunity to look for other work and that’s how he found himself on the sidelines of TD Place Field, keeping a watch on the playing surface.
On game nights, he blends in with the many other team officials who are watching from field level, standing near his alma mater, the Algonquin College Loggersports team. But, there is one thing that stands out. On this cold November night, it’s his jacket, covered in paint streaks, recognition of a hard day’s work.
Posted by Jamie Bramburger, Manager of Community and Student Affairs
