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Catherine Appler knew something was amiss that February morning when her boss said hello. He never did that.

The big oil-and-gas firm she worked for had been laying off employees and dropping contract workers as part of an industry-wide wave of job losses precipitated by the low price of oil. Later that morning, she was called in to human resources. Only seven months into her year-long contract, she was told it was over. She had two weeks.

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She wasn’t angry. She actually apologized to the woman who broke the news.

“I told her I was sorry she had to go through this,” Appler says with a mirthless laugh. “I’ve been there. I’ve laid people off before. It’s awful.”

Appler had been out of work before in her career, so she didn’t expect to be unemployed long. She moved to Alberta in the 1980s to work as a social worker. When she burned out, she moved into administration of a day-care company. Later, motivated by turning 40, she took a pay cut to get a toehold in the oilpatch as an entry-level clerk. Within six months, she was working as a geological technologist by learning on the job and training at SAIT.