Success Stories

The Changing Faces of the North Peace

The Changing Faces of the North Peace : Marc Drader

Last summer Marc Drader was 17 years old and the youngest Digital Collections project leader to date. He and two friends digitized The Changing Faces of the North Peace, a collection at the Fort St. John Museum in Fort St. John, British Columbia that highlights early life in the North Peace.

The project was carried out under contract to Industry Canada’s SchoolNet Digital Collections program, which gives people 15 to 30 years of age entrepreneurial and technology-based job experience converting collections of Canadian material into digital form for display on SchoolNet. The SchoolNet Digital Collections web site has grown to become possibly the largest single source of Canadian content on the Information Highway.

In the fall, Marc left Fort St. John for Waterloo University where he is enrolled in a first year coop program in electrical engineering. When I spoke to him yesterday, he had just been interviewed by the CIBC for his first work assignment. He proudly informed me that he had eight interviews scheduled in all, and he attributes this to SchoolNet Digital Collections. He said that most of his first year colleagues have a real struggle landing even one interview, though about 75% of them are eventually placed. He says his resumé is mostly about his North Peace project, and that this experience makes him very attractive to prospective employers.

Many youth that have worked on a collection have had similar experiences. SchoolNet Digital Collections is definitely giving many of its young participants a boost in the job market, and they know this and are grateful for it.