“Don’t live to work, work to live,” says Jeffrey Rowat. He lives in Amherst, Nova Scotia, though he’s from Garden River First Nation, just outside of Sioux Sainte Marie, Ontario. He had a long career in aviation as an aircraft maintenance engineer, working on helicopters and airplanes, before he went back to university in 2019. His first job since working in aviation has been with the Royal Bank.

When Rowat went back to school at Mount Allison University to get a degree, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, other than that he wanted to get a degree rather than a diploma. He ended up in psychology, something he loves. He got to do an Indigenous summer student internship with the Royal Bank.

Thinking back to his career in aviation, the decision to pursue that path was spontaneous. Having always worked with his hands and been interested in how things worked, taking them apart and putting them back together, it just made sense. Rowat was someone who played with lego and wanted to pursue a trade. Trying to decide between welding and aircraft maintenance, he weighed his options and decided on aircraft maintenance. While he did it, he enjoyed the work, travelling all over North America and enjoying a good salary with good benefits and many perks. Unfortunately, as he got older, he found he was missing out on time at home and special occasions with his three girls, leading to his decision to go to university so he could be home every night. “Some things money can’t buy, like time with your family,” he shares. Looking to the future, Rowat hopes to work for Indigenous Services Canada.

Looking back, school was never something Rowat enjoyed until he went to college. In college, he was engaged and had skills going into it, but elementary school, junior high and high school were big struggles for him. With his mom in the military, his family moved every five to seven years growing up. He attended six different schools in five different provinces before grade nine. With curriculums varying from province to province, he struggled a lot. He also had undiagnosed ADHD, inattentive type. He also needed glasses. Always the new kid, and having a learning disability on top of that, was really hard.

His advice for Indigenous students considering leaving their home communities would be to “embrace it and go for it but just don’t overdo it. Take small steps because even the small steps can have huge positive effects on you, even just the baby steps. Take the year after high school and go travel, and then go to school.”

To keep his mental health in check, Rowat maintains a healthy work-life balance, something that wasn’t possible in his aviation career. Now, he’s home every night and even home for lunch. His perspective shift has come with age and experience, realizing that home is as important, if not more, than time at work.

Thinking of his hopes for Indigenous people moving forward, Rowat hopes for an ability to step away from community in healthy ways, saying, “it's a huge world, and it's safe and you always have somewhere to come home to, which not a lot of people have. We're fortunate that we can always come home.”

In closing, Rowat shares a message of hope, “It's never too late. It doesn't matter how old you are, or where you're at, or what you're doing. It's never too late to do what you want and to change things. Go back, start again, pick another, do something different.”

Working to live instead of living to work, Jeffrey Rowat left behind a career in aviation that was dragging him down and went back to school to find something better. After years of missing milestones with his kids while he worked in aviation maintenance, he decided to study psychology and make some new memories and a new career doing something different. Pursuing a trade offered a great salary, benefits and lifestyle but it couldn’t give him what he wanted most: time with his family.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.