Women in Nuclear - WiN Canada

Tracy has been working for Bruce Power for the past 13 years. As an Authorized Nuclear Operator, she is responsible for the overall safe operation of her assigned unit at the Bruce ‘A’ Nuclear Generating Station.

Tracy holds a Bachelor of Arts History degree from the University of Waterloo. She has also completed the Authorized Nuclear Operator initial certification training, but she constantly continues her education with training and testing to maintain her Canadian Nuclear Standards Commission certification as an ANO. Tracy has two people that she counts as significant career and personal mentors. The first, are her parents; her father, was a mechanical maintainer at Douglas Point and Bruce ‘A’ and the First Chair of the Ontario Hydro Native Circle. Subsequently, Tracy became the First Chair of the Bruce Power Native Circle. Her other mentor is Carol LeNestour, her Control Room Shift Supervisor, the first woman in North America to rise to that position. She has constantly been a voice of encouragement for Tracy, telling her to challenge herself and to further her career.  She has continued to be that voice as Tracy works on her CRSS training.

Being an ANO, Tracy faces new challenges and opportunities for learning every day. She sets a goal each day to leave the unit in better shape than when she arrived, whether that means fuelling, getting something repaired or moving ahead in an outage. She is proud to say that most days she achieves this goal.  She cites a few projects as her most rewarding, on being the Liquid Zone/ Reactivity Management champion and seeing the actual results from the committee’s ideas being put into practice in the station. Another was being a member of the WANO Peer Audit at Bruce Power that gave her a better understanding of what it takes to be a WANO #1 plant.

Tracy’s involvement with WiN started when she was asked to attend the CNA conference in 2004 to help rejuvenate WiN-Canada and she was amazed by the women that she met there. The connections that she has made throughout the industry have been very personally rewarding.  She enjoys sharing stories with others in the industry and knowing that she is not alone in her thinking, which has lead to the opportunity to institute change. Inspiration has come from the group as it was at a WiN-Bruce meeting that she first thought about writing and submitting a technical paper to the CNS and she has now had her second paper accepted. Tracy credits the women that she met through WiN with setting a great example for her of how to be successful, strong but also have a balanced life which allowed her to realize she could reach higher and do the same.

Created on January 30, 2009.