Tour Guide News
Interesting jobs come with interesting courses (excerpt from The Toronto Star – August 17, 2006)
Choosing the right career, or changing an old one, is always a challenge but Ontario's private career colleges have diploma courses to challenge even the most jaded palate. There are courses out there that will teach you how to pick locks, dive for sunken treasure, master the mystique of flower arranging or become a private eye.
A good jump-off point is the website of the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, at http://www.cicic.ca. The centre acts as a national clearing house for Canadian and international education and occupational qualifications.
The pickings are rich indeed, especially if you want to be a Locksmith. Students learn about the history and development of security products, such as bank vaults and safes. They also study the designs of door locks on houses and all makes of automobiles, so they can help people who lock themselves out.
The Academy of Private Investigations and Security has been training gumshoes in Hamilton since 1992. It offers to turn you into a private eye in just 10 weeks, for a tuition fee of $2,420, plus books. You buy your own trench coat, though.
Crave underwater excitement? The Canadian Working Divers Institute could be the place for you. In each of the 12 training weeks, students cover 24 hours of theory and 24 hours of diving. Before you can enroll, you have to meet some pre-requisites: Grade 12, CPR, First Aid, SCUBA certification and pass a medical.
If you'd rather stay on top of the water, how about being the cruise director on a large ocean liner? That's just one of the potential jobs covered by the diploma course in travel and tourism at the International Institute of Travel. It's a 28-week course, logging 560 hours, for a tuition fee of $3,300. The chances of it leading to employment are very good: the tourism industry employs more people than any other and is the leading job provider for women. In Canada, it employs 1.4 million workers, about 10 per cent of the Canadian workforce, and it accounts for 90,000 jobs in the Greater Toronto Area.
The industry also faces a serious labour shortage in the coming years. So this may be a perfect time to pursue your dream of becoming a reservation agent, travel counselor, tour guide or flight attendant.
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