By Derek Sankey, Calgary Herald
April 24, 2010
Shahab Moeini grew up in the mountains of Iran and fell in love with nature at a young age, so it was no surprise he decided to study natural resource engineering and environmental science in university.
"I remember being four or five years old and my aunt and uncle would put me in a backpack and take me to the mountains and I liked the environment, so I decided to study natural resources, in particular water resources," says Moeini, who came to Canada in July. He became a watershed and conservation engineer, working in Africa for a large international organization for about eight years prior to landing in Montreal with his wife.
With little knowledge about Canada, they got a car and drove west to Vancouver before deciding to drive back to settle in Calgary.
"We heard a little bit about Banff and Calgary, but didn't know a lot about it or exactly where it was even," recalls Moeini. "So we crossed Calgary and decided to come back and stay here."
He went to the local government immigration service to become familiar with the city and province as they settled into their new life together, hoping to make connections to find a job in his field.
As a foreign-trained environmental worker, he was one of 15 applicants accepted into an integration program out of a pool of about 300 to learn about the Canadian working experience through the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society.
As part of the program, his resume and documents were forwarded as a sample of the students to one of the companies the group was to visit. When he got to O2 Planning + Design, he was in for a big surprise.
"When I went there, the president of the company offered me a job," says Moeini.
That was about six months ago and he's been working for the company ever since.
The environment is a growth sector for employment across Canada and foreign-trained environmental workers are seen as critical to the long-term health of the sector, says Grant Trump, president of the Calgary-based Environmental Careers Organization (ECO) Canada.
"It's a supply and demand issue," says Trump. "We have to look at where we're going to find these mid-career folks. We're going to have to look at immigration and how to put them directly into environmental employment..."
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