LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON - Last week, Denny Moses of Fort Simpson received a nice surprise in the mail: a certificate authenticating his status as a journeyman millwright.

Denny Moses of Fort Simpson holds up the certificate officially making him a journeyman millwright, which he received in the mail last week. Moses undertook training at several TransCanada natural gas compression facilities in Northern Alberta as part of the Pipeline and Facilities Operations Training Program, a program aimed at training Northerners for jobs at the three anchor fields that will supply natural gas to the Mackenzie Gas Project. - photo courtesy of Denny Moses

For Moses, the certificate marked the end of a more than four-year journey that saw him leave his community and head south to Edson, Alta., where, in addition to other Northern Alberta communities, he put in his time learning the ways of an industrial mechanic at various TransCanada natural gas compression facilities.

"They have a lot of stations around here and I just do maintenance on them," said Moses. "A lot of the equipment that I work on are generators, power turbines, gas generators, little air compressors."

Moses is a graduate of the Pipeline and Facilities Operations Training Program, a program aimed at training Northerners for positions at the three anchor fields that will pump natural gas for the Mackenzie Gas Project.

But as of right now, Moses is a rare breed: the program - created by a committee made up of various industry members and organizations, from ConocoPhillips Canada to Aurora College - stopped taking in new candidates in 2007, once the regulatory process for the pipeline was left solely in the Joint Review Panel (JRP)'s court.

With the JRP set to unveil its report in December, construction of the pipeline - if it goes ahead - is still years away.

So what's Moses to do in the meantime? Stay south, he said.

"I'm thinking they'll probably like to keep me here in the meantime," said Moses.

That raises another question: will Moses - who was born and raised in Fort Simpson but has spent the past four years living in a community nearly seven times bigger - come back North if the pipeline goes into production?

"I would like to. It really depends on what kind of job offer there is over there," he said.

Kevin Heron, pipeline benefits advisor for the Mackenzie Gas Project Office in Fort Simpson, said Moses and other program participants are lucky to have a cushion in case the pipeline doesn't go through.

"Any company down south that spends four years training a person, you can rest assured that if that person is a good employee, they're going to try to keep them," he said.

But Heron is convinced students will come back North if the project is given the green light.

"I think there are close family ties to the North," he said.

Though Moses's parents, aunts, uncles and some of his siblings live in Fort Simpson - and he does miss them, visiting them twice a year - he is single, with no family of his own to take care of.

That makes staying in Alberta instead of working on the pipeline an easier choice compared to those with family obligations, he said.

"For me, on my own, the decision was only for me. I can see if somebody, for a family, in thinking about those decisions, (has) to think not only for themselves."