One former North Battleford resident will be representing Canada internationally in a few months, though you might not have heard of her.
Marissa Halter, along with 34 other Canadians, will be going to Leipzig in Germany to represent the true north strong and free at the World Skills competition.
The competition involves everything from woodworking to robotics to hairdressing, with competitors coming from everywhere in Canada. Halter, who now lives in Calgary, will be competing in offset printing.
Marissa graduated from JPII in 2010, where she was first introduced to graphic design.
"At school we had an information processing course our teacher actually went out and got us a business contract and we had to create a logo for them. I loved doing that. I just loved creating logos and editing pictures. So I decided I wanted to take that into college."
Before college though, Halter took a year off to work as St. Mary Community School as a teaching assistant. When she came to SAIT to study graphic design, she found a new fascination in the operation of the printing press.
"Throughout high school I had been really interested in graphic design. I found [the SAIT] graphic design program really neat, but when I had a chance to run the printing press at school, I loved it."
Offset printing might not be familiar to everyone, but the process is a seriously involved one. For the World Skills competition, Halter has to set up ink profiles, set up paper, make sure the colour is correct, and print 1,000 copies, as if for a client. Afterwards, she has to clean the press. In total, the process takes around two hours, leaving little room for mistakes. Other tasks include cutting the 1,000 sheets of paper, doing maintenance on the press, and mixing ink.
"It seems easy, but you have to get it within the slightest amount, or the colour won't be correct."
To get to the World Skills competition, Halter trained and competed, first provincially and then nationally. She took home gold in both tournaments, making her Canada's representative in Leipzig.
How she does at the World Skills Competition is still to be determined - there's a great deal of training that remains to be done, and her overall performance will also depend on the quality of the competitors from other countries. Either way, her plans after she graduates this spring are more certain, at least in terms of where she'll be.
"I have a lot of opportunities with press jobs, so I'm going to say Calgary for a little bit, just because I know the industry there. But I'm going to say Saskatoon eventually, to be closer to home."
