FORT McMURRAY — In a surprising role reversal, an East Coast company hopes to recruit as many as 200 skilled workers from Fort McMurray for jobs that, for many of them, would mean a return home.

Irving Shipbuilding is hosting a one-day job fair in the northern Alberta city Wednesday to hire journeymen, welders, pipefitters, fabricators and iron workers. The company recently won a $25-billion contract to build ships for the Royal Canadian Navy, a deal the federal government has said will provide enough full-time work in the region for 30 years.

“We know there are a number of Maritimers out West with the experience and skills we need,” said Mary Keith, vice-president of communications for parent company J.D. Irving Ltd. With good jobs on offer, skilled Albertans might like to try life on the East Coast, too, she added.

Irving’s jobs could be a big draw in Fort McMurray, where unemployment has surpassed the national average and is more than double what it was this time last year. Thousands in the region are looking for work.

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At Irving’s recent job fair in Halifax, Keith said a handful of the 600 job hunters who showed up had come directly from the airport, after returning from Alberta, where they’ve been working. Their families drove them to the fair, in hopes they’d get a job that would bring them home.

Like the oil industry, shipbuilding has been plagued by economic boom and bust, but this contract is a “generational commitment,” Keith said.

Besides the journeymen and tradespeople for the shipyard, J.D. Irving is also looking for professionals in finance, IT and human resources for other parts of its mammoth operation, which includes pulp, paper, lumber, rail and the Cavendish Farms potato processing plant in Lethbridge. The company expects to make 7,900 hires from now until the end of 2017, Keith said.