A 22-year-old Montrealer is representing Canada at the upcoming WorldSkills competition in Masonry. After years at John Rennie High School and John Abbott College, Maximilian De Belle Holowka says he fell in love with the trades. He drove the 42 kilometres from his home in Kirkland to St-Hubert every day to attend the only trade school in Quebec offering bricklaying courses in English. He made “quick work” of learning the skill, and in seven months he went from beginner to winner, having collected masonry awards within his first year of school. “I fell in love with bricklaying through the competitions, through all my competitive side and doing all this,” Max said. Max learned masonry at Access Royal Oak Professional Training Centre at 3555 Rue Rocheleau. He quickly won local, regional, provincial and national skills competitions. “I was competing against people who’ve had seven, eight years of experience in the industry,” Max said. His championship banners hang from the ceiling here at the trade school where he learned that precision is the most important criterion in any job - or competition. “My wall has to be 1000 millimetres. If it’s 999, that is one millimetre worth one point. So you can only lose a max of ten millimetres or ten points per aspect,” Max said. The trades and tradespeople get treated with respect here, says Instructor Stephane Landry. “We have first-year apprenticeship, second and third, and after that we become journeymen. So our goal here is just to prepare them to integrate into the industry,” Landry said. “Obviously with Max it’s a little bit different. We have to bring it to, I would say roughly, the level of a journeyman as a skill.” Max is the second Masonry student from Access Royal Oak to get invited to the WorldSkills competition. “All my life I fought for project-based learning as I was a principal in elementary schools, and now I get to know what the trades are. It is so meaningful to be hands-on and to connect with the brain,” said Access Assistant Director Francois Couture. Max’s brain is full of anticipation these days. “My trade has 23 competitors from 23 countries; the best in each country! They’re expecting 150,000 spectators per day. It’s four days long or a 22-hour competition. It’s insane,” he said. He’s leaving Montreal for Shanghai, China on Sept. 18 for the WorldSkills Competition, two years after he laid his first brick. “It’s the Olympics for trades. It’s the Olympics for skills,” he said.
