SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Dozens of students wandered back and forth between Yellowknife's two high schools Tuesday, competing in skills and trades and speaking with educators and industry professionals to about future career paths.

About 90 competitors from throughout the NWT took part in Skills Canada 's 13th annual Territorial Skills Competition, held at Sir John Franklin High School, St. Patrick High School, the Kimberlite Career and Technical Centre and the Akaitcho Trades and Technical Centre. The competition included about 15 contests in categories ranging from aesthetics and hairstyling to welding, baking and graphic design.

Taylor Rein, a student at Sir John Franklin, took part in the aesthetics competition last year. As she performed a facial on volunteer Brittany Goulding, she said she's trying harder this year.

"Last year was sort of the first experience. I placed third last year so this year I'm shooting higher," she said.

Fifteen-year-old Sebastien Remillard, of St. Patrick High School, has been training all year to hone in his culinary skills. For the cooking competition, he and 10 other competitors had to create two parts of a decadent three-course meal including homemade pasta, a salmon dish and an apple torte or flan with caramel sauce.

"It's fun cooking; looking at all the ingredients that you have and see what you can make," said Remillard.

He said it took him all morning Tuesday - more than three hours - to create his culinary masterpiece.

"It took is a year to practice all this and that's a lot of eating but I'm not sick of it yet," he said.

Pat Sullivan had the difficult task of taste-testing the meals.

"It's harder than it looks," he said with a smile and a fork-full of apple torte.

"We only have to judge the tasting. Someone else judges the temperature and the cleanliness of the kitchen and the preparation."

Jen Fullerton, executive director of Skills Canada NWT said this is a year of firsts for the territorial competition. The event hosted a try-a-skill tent pitched outside Sir John Franklin's front doors, where students who were not enrolled in a competition could try out skills such as welding, plumbing and cooking.

She said this is also the first year secondary and post-secondary students as well as apprentices from all regions of the NWT have competed in Yellowknife.

"There are 90 competitors from a number of communities around the Northwest Territories, every region of the Northwest Territories this year. There aren't competitors from the Sahtu but they have a new cooking program so they came down to observe the cooking competition. They can look at competing next year," said Fullerton.

She said the mission of the competition is to promote careers, skill trades and technology. She said a lot of the contests offered at the regional and territorial level are only offered in the NWT, such as the regional culture sewing contest.

"We are not yet offering it as a competition at the territorial but this year it's a demonstration event and we're hoping to turn it into a competition next year," she said.

Gold medallists at the territorial skills competition may be eligible to join Team NWT to compete against their peers at the Skills Canada National Competition in Quebec City in June.

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