This me column was written by Dave Mackenzie, who worked as a welder in Calgary. For more information on CBC’s first-person stories, visit the FAQs.

I was standing in Bay 5 in a smoky, dark welding shop in a soulless industrial park in Calgary. What used to be a clean, tidy and well-staffed workplace was now a mess.

Engineering drawings were everywhere. Cut lists were missing, broken tools were piling up, and the previous shift had somehow managed to build part of a gas processing structure backwards.

“What are we do here?” I thought.

That was last winter. I’ve been doing this work for almost a decade and I had never seen such low morale.

The welding teams I oversee are an integral but invisible part of the oil and gas sector, Alberta’s largest industry. On the outskirts of Calgary, we work day and night to fabricate massive structures for distant oil and gas fields – approximately 35 meters long and weighing up to 100 tons.

It’s a much-maligned industry. After years of austerity, government tax cuts and rising energy prices had finally given us hope. but Unlike previous booms, there isn’t a lot of new investment this time.

With no regular work, welding shops had cut their workforces and cut wages for those who remained. When large orders came in, stores brought welders in much the same way as steel and welding electrodes.

Then let her go. But those were people, not consumables.

That’s why I kept my goals modest. Protect my crew, keep up the quality of work, and accomplish what we were able to on our allotted shift – in that order. Today it was clear that we would not meet our deadlines.

Suddenly I heard someone yell: “Man down! Man down!”

My heartbeat skipped for a moment. I was gone, running in the direction of that voice.

I turned the corner in Bay 6, past Hermingildo maneuvering an I-beam into place with the overhead crane.

I turned right, climbed over a loose pile of angle iron and cut off to bay 7.

Russ writhed in pain on the bottom of the pump skid. He was well over 60, with curly gray hair and a hockey player’s smile. He had served in the Canadian Forces in Bosnia and worked as a night-shift welder for years before joining my crew. I liked this Cape Bretoner from the start.

Russ held his left knee. His lower leg was grotesquely misaligned.

I looked at Laurn, who was standing on a ladder nearby. Earlier that shift, she saw that Russ was injured and offered to change jobs. But “he’s a stubborn old caper,” she said.

Hailing from Sydney Forks, NS, Laurn had her own stubbornness. Faced with thankless jobs that were both tough and boring (the worst combination in a welding shop), she attacked them with a determination I could only envy.

Russ writhed in pain. I fell to my knees ready to administer first aid. He waved me off.

The rest of the crew gathered around him.

Tomo was there, a crew leader who was always there when needed – such as when the oxyfuel hoses caught fire and were burning right next to some high pressure gas cylinders. His cry saved us from disaster that day.

Nicole was there too. One of the few born and raised Calgarians on the crew, she placed fourth in the Skills Canada welding competition while at Notre Dame High School. But three layoffs in her first five years as a welder have upset her in the industry.

Russ tried to calm us down. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Give me the dunnage,” he said through clenched teeth.

A four by four meter piece of wood, as long as his leg and just as heavy, was pushed towards him by one of the crew members. He placed it next to his misaligned knee and raised his fist.

I couldn’t believe what I saw. The dunnage was the anvil and Russ’s fist was the hammer. He cut his knee between the two.

I jumped back, startled. I think we all have.

The leg was miraculously straight again. Russ was back on his feet, smiling and apologizing.

He needed surgery every week, he told everyone, and sometimes his knee just popped out. Nothing to do but hammer it back and move on. He assured us he was fine, picked up his welding helmet and got back to work.

Relieved, the rest of the crew drifted away. As I went back to Bay 5 to figure out how to cut apart this back structure, I thought about who we are and what we’re doing there.

This crew came from all over the world and from all corners of Canada. Some had picked up welding straight out of high school, but most, like me, got into it by accident. There was an engineer from India whose credentials were not recognized in Canada, and another person who patrolled the DMZ as a tank driver during his Korean military service. Hermingildo seemed to have done every job at his disposal since immigrating from the Philippines, from pressing trousers for a fashion company to driving a taxi.

Welding for oil and gas is dirty work and quite dangerous. It’s tough on our bodies. I felt like most of us were okay with that. We chose this craft and this industry because it was once something to be proud of and a way to get ahead. Today it feels like that is no longer the case.

I left this crew earlier this year. I now teach high school kids to weld and believe and hope there will always be a need for it qualified craftsmen – if not in oil and gas, then somewhere else.

But I often think of this crew. All but two were eventually fired or resigned of their own accord. I wonder if, like Russ’s broken knee, we weren’t all a bit broken and were holding on as best we could.

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