Tammy Herrick has been fixing pipes and breaking gender stereotypes for more than 30 years in Westlock.
She is one of the first women to work as a level IV maintenance worker/power engineer in northern Alberta.
Herrick has faced her fair share of challenges in her 36-year career at the Westlock Healthcare Centre and formerly the Immaculata Hospital since she started working back in 1989.
“I was so naive. I never realized what I would be encountering by being a female in my role,” said Herrick. “Even now, I say I work at a hospital and they say, ‘oh, you're a nurse?’ Back then, they didn't understand.”
Herrick is the lead maintenance worker at the hospital in Westlock in charge of working on HVAC, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, boilers, hot water heating for taps, plumbing, electrical and snow removal in the winter.
Herrick has many stories of how she was looked down upon because of her gender. One time a patient at the hospital asked her how she felt taking a man’s job who has kids at home to feed. Another time she climbed up a ladder to work in the ceiling space and was told by another woman to let a man climb up there. She also heard people talking behind her back criticizing the hospital for hiring a woman in a maintenance position.
“I was always of the mindset where I had to prove myself over and over again because I was an extreme underdog being female doing a man's job,” said
Herrick.
“That made me into a better worker but what it also did was I neglected to spend as much time with my daughter as I should. I was always willing to be the one to step up and take the stats, Christmas, Easter, whatever. My daughter told me a year or two ago that she remembers me being gone for those holidays more than me being home.”
Herrick’s father was a gas plant operator which inspired her to pursue a career as a power engineer with the intention to follow in her father’s footsteps
Herrick describes herself as a “daddy’s girl” interested in working with tools, lifting weights, biking, running and hiking.
Herrick went to SAIT and graduated with part A of her third-class power engineering degree in 1987.
She got her start with the hospital in Westlock when her grandfather found an advertisement for a part-time power engineering job at the old Immaculata Hospital which was run by Catholic nuns.
“I was told I'd never get the job because I wasn't Catholic and I was a girl, but my grandfather had a little bit of faith in me, and he recommended I apply,” said Herrick.
Herrick originally started the job as a 20-hour per week position which she held for four years before being laid off. Less than a year after being laid off, she was recalled to a full-time position just before she planned to pursue a chemical engineering program at NAIT.
“When I started, it was a very close-knit family in the hospital because it was locally funded, locally run. It felt very much like a family in the beginning stages and then when we moved into the new hospital (in 1995), some of the nuns came with us, but we were no longer considered a Catholic facility. At that point, I think the family feel kind of went away,” Herrick said.
It took a long time for Herrick to enjoy her job again.
“The last four or five years have been the most fun, most enjoyable years of my career. After 30 some years, I'm finally enjoying my job as much as I ever have,” she said.
“I've been through some pretty big changes in the government, in the way the hospitals are run, the way they're funded. When I started, we were still run by local boards of elected people within town. I’ve seen many different changes, different governments and different levels of funding. I was only 22 when I started and pretty naïve. I feel like I grew up there. It almost felt a little bit like home.”
One of the most challenging times for Herrick was working at the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I didn't feel very thanked, because you were asked to work and I have a sense of responsibility. Every department was short staffed,” she said.
“A lot of people don't realize the frontline workers didn't have the option of working from home.”
Retirement is looming for Herrick after nearly 36 years of work. She is hoping to get into metalworking artwork with her experience working with metal and tools. She’s also hoping to do some traveling with her mom.
“I'll be nearing 40 years at the hospital. I thought it was just a stepping stone to the next stage of my life. It's funny how things go,” she said.
Herrick is also, remarkably, a cancer survivor.
“I beat it down with a stick,” she said. “I didn't work out, I did sports before all that but once I was diagnosed and went through all the treatments and everything, I loved life.”
